Java™ Design: Objects, UML, and Process

6.2. Conclusion

Each business process can be captured and represented as a use case. When identifying use cases, it's important that we create them at an appropriate level of granularity. Specification at too fine a level leads to an overly complex use case model. Use cases should represent those business processes that provide some result of observable value to a project stakeholder. Each use case, however, consists of many flows of events. Each flow of events represents an actor's interaction with a use case, called a scenario. A scenario is typically composed of the individual features and rules that make up an application.

Most systems seem as if they are composed of a virtually unlimited number of requirements. Our use case model serves ...