Are Use Cases Beneficial for Developers Using Agile Requirements?

Abstract

Agile teams commonly use User Stories, conversations with On-Site Customers, and Test Cases to gather requirements. Some Agile teams like to add other artifacts, such as Use Cases to provide more detail to the Agile Requirements. This paper presents the results of a controlled experiment aimed to learn whether Use Cases could help Agile Requirements, and, indirectly, to find if Agile Requirements techniques are sufficient. In the study, subjects were given requirements for three maintenance tasks as Use Cases, or Agile Requirements, or both. We found that subjects using Use Cases spent less time understanding requirements in comparison to subjects not using Use Cases. In addition, the presence of the Use Cases helped subjects to ask better questions to the On-Site Customer. However, we could not determine if subjects using Use Cases understood the requirements better. We conclude that the inclusion of Use Cases in Agile Requirements could benefit Agile teams.