Open Issues in Industrial Use Case Modeling

Abstract

Use Cases have achieved wide use as a specification tool for observable behavior of systems. However, there is still much controversy, inconsistent use, and free-flowing interpretations of use case models, in fact, not even experts widely recognized in the community agree on the semantics of concepts. Consequently, use case models are dangerously ambiguous, and there is an unnecessary divergence of practice. The purpose of the workshop was to identify and characterize some sources of ambiguity. It gathered specialists from academia and industry involved in modeling use cases to exchange ideas and proposals, with an eye to both clear definition and practical application. Some presented topics were discussed in-depth (the UML metamodel for use cases, use case instances, use cases in MDD/MDA, use case model vs. conceptual model, and tools for use cases specification), while others were left as open issues for future research. We hope our suggestions will be useful to improve the metamodel of use cases, and stimulate further research to reach a stronger coupling between the use case model and other static, behavioral and architectural models.