MIS501 Principles of Programming: Use Case Diagram Analysis Report

This report, submitted by a student, provides an analysis of a use case diagram within the context of the MIS501 Principles of Programming course. The report begins with a use case diagram and then discusses its suitability. The document highlights how use case diagrams focus on system users and are easily understandable by stakeholders, including customers, executives, and users. It emphasizes that identifying potential issues early in the design phase saves time and resources. The report also discusses how a well-developed use case model can drive software development aspects such as project planning, test case definitions, and user documentation. It mentions the role of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) in helping users interact with engineered systems and in defining and organizing requirements. The report also suggests areas for improvement in the student's diagram, such as incorporating include/extend features, providing appropriate use cases, and clearly mentioning actors. References to supporting literature are also provided. The report highlights the importance of requirement analysis in system development and the use of use cases for capturing functional requirements and architectural views to support system requirements.

Running head: MIS501 PRINCIPLES OF PROGRAMMING
MIS501 PRINCIPLES OF PROGRAMMING
Name of student
Name of university
Author’s note:

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Table of Contents
Use case diagram............................................................................................................2
Suitability of use case diagram......................................................................................3
References......................................................................................................................6

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Use case diagram
Figure 1: Use case diagram

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Source: Created by author
Suitability of use case diagram
The use case diagrams mainly focusses on users of systems, not solely the system
itself, and therefore the real system requirements are brought to light in the initial phases of
the designing of the diagram (Rahman & Zin, 2018). As the use cases mainly consists
majorly the narrative text, it is significantly easy to understand by all the stakeholders, that
includes the customers, executives and the users, not solely the testers and the developers.
With the inclusion of all the stakeholders during early stages of planning of the project, the
people could be introduced in the initial phases of the project. The particular individuals
could be introduced in the project who have the proper knowledge for the solutions of the
issues faced in the project, promote the main sense of the buy-in from the end-users, and then
eliminate the surprises when the deployment of the system is done (Seidl et al., 2015). Each
of the use case mainly describes one particular method by which the system is used but one
of big advantage of the use case modelling is that the description of all the things that might
go wrong in the project are easily discovered from the use case modelling. The identification
of the exception to the successful scenario in the initial stages of the project save a
significantly huge amount of time and capital by discovering the subtle requirements
(Haoues, Sellami & Ben-Abdallah, 2016). Ultimately, as soon as the use case model is
efficiently developed, it could be then efficiently used for driving the major aspects of the
software development that includes the project planning (Complexity, cost as well as
prediction of time), test case definitions, object models as well as the user documentation.
When utilising the Unified Modelling Language, the use case diagrams mainly assists with
the understanding of how the user may interact with system that have been engineered by the
project teams (Kumar & Krishnamurthi, 2016). And finally, it must assist the team with the
defining and organising the requirements. But the use case diagrams could also be utilised

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outside the software engineering, with making just few modifications, for representing the
system where the actors are efficiently working for accomplishing the goals. Alike the
various layouts and the diagrams, it is required to keep the details at the minimum (Zhang et
al., 2016). The UML use case diagrams are not solely regarding providing the in-depth look
at each of the elements on the system. Rather, it represents the high level overview of the
relation among the use cases, actors and the system that is being developed in the
organisations. Popularly, a well-developed UML use case diagram might assist in any of the
situations where there is a requirement of clarifying all the relationships of the system. It
could be analysed that the requirement analysis is significantly crucial for the systems
development (Vemuri, Chala & Fathi, 2017). It is commonly considered that in the situations
where the companies do not have the proper requirements, the designing or building the
accurate project and subsequently product do not enable the users in doing their work. It has
been argued by the researchers that the use cases are started as the method of capturing the
primary functional requirements and then consider the architectural views simultaneously
with main motivation of the establishment of the architectural foundation of the system and
consequently supporting the coverage of the requirements. It has also been emphasised that
the architectural ability of the use cases for withstanding the potential shockwaves that are
generated from any of the extreme requirements (Karim et al., 2017). Additionally, it has
been highlighted that any use case mainly serves not solely as the vehicle for populating any
other views with the linked artifacts but also as the means of validating software architecture
for the fidelity and the completeness. It has also been stressed by the researchers that the use
cases are mainly popular because coherent stories are conveyed by the use case diagrams
regarding the method by which the system would behave in the utilisation. It mainly becomes
as the communication device among the various stakeholders involved in the project. It could
be analysed that the functions of use case are more than just initiating the dynamic model,

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instead they help in driving the dynamic model and with extension the complete effort
involved in the development. It has also been emphasised by the researchers that the use
cases are significantly powerful tool for the identification as well as capturing the main
requirements of the system. It has also been argued that any use case offers the required
inventory of the types of interactions that could occur among the systems and the users,
offering the required forum for the experts of domain, the end users and the developers for
communicating the requirements among one another (Arora & Bhatia, 2018). The use case
could be described as the methodology that is efficiently used in the system analysis for
identifying, clarifying and the organising the system requirements. The system could be
described as something that is being operated or even developed, like the mail-order product
sales and the service website. The system objectives could mainly include the planning of
entire requirements, the validation of the hardware design, debugging after testing any
software product under development, creation of the online help reference or even
performing the consumer-service-oriented task.
From the analysis of the diagram of the student, it could be analysed that there are
several features that could be improved. The include, extend feature of the use case has not
been utilised in the use case diagrams. The appropriate use cases are not provided for the
system that are required to be introduced in the use case diagram. The actors are not clearly
mentioned by the student in the use case diagram that has to be properly mentioned.

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References
Arora, P. K., & Bhatia, R. (2018). Agent-Based Regression Test Case Generation using Class
Diagram, Use cases and Activity Diagram. Procedia Computer Science, 125, 747-
753.
Haoues, M., Sellami, A., & Ben-Abdallah, H. (2016, November). Predicting the functional
change status in UML activity diagram from the use case diagram. In 2016 IEEE/ACS
13th International Conference of Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA) (pp.
1-8). IEEE.
Karim, S., Liawatimena, S., Trisetyarso, A., Abbas, B. S., & Suparta, W. (2017, November).
Automating functional and structural software size measurement based on XML
structure of UML sequence diagram. In 2017 IEEE International Conference on
Cybernetics and Computational Intelligence (CyberneticsCom) (pp. 24-28). IEEE.
Kumar, B. S., & Krishnamurthi, I. (2016). Improving User Participation in Requirement
Elicitation and Analysis by Applying Gamification Using Architect’s Use Case
Diagram. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Big Data and Cloud
Computing Challenges (ISBCC–16’) (pp. 471-482). Springer, Cham.
Rahman, N. A., & Zin, N. A. M. (2018). Visualizing Requirements using Use Case Diagram
and Diagram 0 for Compound Information System. Journal of Mathematics &
Computing Science, 3(1), 34-38.
Seidl, M., Scholz, M., Huemer, C., & Kappel, G. (2015). The Use Case Diagram. In UML@
Classroom (pp. 23-47). Springer, Cham.

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Vemuri, S., Chala, S., & Fathi, M. (2017, April). Automated use case diagram generation
from textual user requirement documents. In 2017 IEEE 30th Canadian Conference
on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE) (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
Zhang, C., Duan, Z., Yu, B., Tian, C., & Ding, M. (2016). A test case generation approach
based on sequence diagram and automata models. Chinese Journal of
Electronics, 25(2), 234-240.