An Enterprise-wide Use Case Knowledge Center

Black Diamond Experts Accelerate Use Case Adoption in Projects by 40%

The Challenge

Over the past five years, a top-ten insurance company had developed a standard system development process based on the Rational Unified Process. An essential part of the process required use cases. Project teams were either not employing use cases or duplicating the effort by also developing functional requirement specifications. 

The Solution

Black Diamond was engaged to create and staff a Use Case Knowledge Center. The purpose of the UCKC was to accelerate project teams’ understanding and application of use cases throughout the enterprise. Black Diamond experts mentored project teams on a use case driven approach to requirements management, project planning, analysis and design and testing. Furthermore, Black Diamond supplied examples, training and reference materials to help teams become self-sufficient.

The scope of the solution included:

• installing and configuring IBM Rational ReqPro, ClearQuest, Software Modeler and Rose
• installing and configuring Jaczone Waypointer consulting and mentoring on the appropriate use of the above requirements management tools
• mentoring on selection and definition of use cases on projects
• estimation and scheduling of use case work on projects metric definition, data collection, and reporting on progress of adoption
• on-line library of use case examples and best practices
• training classes and lunch-and-learns
• augmenting project teams with necessary skills to identify and write effective use cases

The Result

Black Diamond increased the application of use cases on projects by 15% within one year. This means that compared with the previous year, 15% more projects were successfully completed using requirements management with use cases. Project managers’ request for a waiver on use cases were reduced by 40%. This means that 40% more ongoing projects are adopting use cases. By increasing compliance with use cases, adherence to the overall RUP-based process was also increased.