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RUP elaboration
How do you choose the right use cases?
I've just come across an article called Risk reduction with the RUP phase plan that talks about RUP's risk-driven approach and provides advice about choosing the right use cases during the elaboration phase.
It is important to educate stakeholders about the objectives of the phases, especially Elaboration, in which the aim is to attack risk and not necessarily to provide functionality. Progress during Elaboration should therefore be measured by the number of risks addressed rather than by the number of use-case flows implemented. Although the latter metric is essential, it is used to measure progress during Construction, when the focus is on implementing functionality.
Have a read. As the article says, the key question answered by the elaboration phase is "can we build it?". If you're not answering this, you may have problems later on because you're pushing risk to the end of the project. Spread the pressure and get the hard stuff out of the way.
Re: RUP elaboration
G'day,
Interesting stuff and yes i generally advocate doing either the hardest or more complex use cases/funtions first since these traditionally have the higher risk if not higher business value attached.
However, I'm poring over Crystal Clear at the moment and it seems there's social reasons in terms of improved morale amongst a team with doing an easy part first to get an 'Early Victory' as Cockburn puts it. He actually goes on to advocate Easy thing first, hard thing second as well which is an interesting combination.
