By David Randall
@ Tuesday, June 24, 2008 7:22 PM
I do not believe use cases replace functional requirements. For me, use cases are an additional modelling artefact that can support functional requirements. The requirement is an explicit, declarative, autonomous contract between the business and the development team. It is my belief that many people prefer use cases over functional requirements as the requirements are not written well.
Furthermore, use cases should be be fee to be rewritten and improved as the interaction design is better understood, whilst the requirements should (by comparison) remain (relatively) unchanged.
Whilst a requirement might be "The system shall allow a person to do a thing" (and refers to an objective and rationale) -- use cases get into how this is done, and what order it is done. As important as these things are, the majority of these decisions will not be business or user requirements, they are decision's on how best to deal with the requirements.
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