Generating use cases

According to the web-authority that is Wikipedia “a use case describes ‘who’ can do ‘what’ with the system in question. The use case technique is used to capture a system’s behavioral requirements by detailing scenario-driven threads through the functional requirements.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_case

A template for developing a use case is outlined as follows:

• Use case name
• Version
• Goal
• Summary
• Actors
• Preconditions
• Triggers

The “use cases” in the original bid really just comprise the summary part of this template and I would now like to work with the University Research Office (and other potential “actors”) to flesh out these sketches and develop new ones:

• The repository team/URO are automatically notified when bibliographic information about an article associated with Leeds Met is available in Web of Science. Such a facility can be incorporated into the workflow to ensure citation data is up to date in the repository.

• Researchers have expressed the wish for targeted communications regarding their outputs which would encourage them to deposit an appropriate author produced version of a recently published / cited article. A link to Web of Science could therefore produce an automated communication which would alert them to the presence of their citation on Web of Science, and request an author version for the repository. This would be much more useful to them than a regular, generic reminder to deposit their publications, and the timeliness of it would make deposit a more likely outcome. It would have the potential to contribute to advocacy of the repository service by providing evidence of the putative link between Open Access and increased citation rate.

• The Research Excellence Framework (REF) that will replace the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in 2010 is yet to be finalised; it is likely to make greater use of quantitative measures of assessment, such as bibliometrics. The need exists, therefore, to implement technologies that facilitate the extraction and collation of relevant data for use by institutions, individual academicsand HEFCE. It is also important to develop use-cases that inform the evolving process of the REF.

In the first instance I hope to have a discussion on the blog to more clearly elucidate our goals, preconditions and triggers before sitting down with our actors (URO/academic staff).