Use cases – Yesterday, today, and tomorrow

Abstract

To my knowledge, no other software engineering language construct as significant as use cases has been adopted so quickly and so widely among practitioners. I believe this is because use cases play a role in so many different aspects of software engineering.

Although I first used the term in 1986, I had actually been working on and evolving the concept of use cases since 1967. So many people have asked me how I came up with this concept that I decided to write this article to explain the origins and evolution of use cases. I’ll also summarize what they have helped us achieve so far, and then suggest a few improvements for the future.