Pre-Conference Workshops - Thursday 13 March 2008

The Wiki Way: Knowledge Management For the People
Presenter: Stuart Culshaw, Web Content Manager, ILOG
Time: 9.00am - 12.30pm

Wiki (Hawaian for "quick") could be considered as more of a philosophy than a tool. What started out as a simple set of scripts to edit, format and link web pages has evolved into a powerful and affordable new approach to knowledge management. An increasing number of organizations are adopting wikis as an alternative to complex and expensive web content management systems.

If you're looking for an easy-to-learn and simple-to-use content management tool for an upcoming personal or professional project, or if you're just curious to find out more about the technology behind the success of Wikipedia, this workshop will introduce you to wiki's basic principles, walk you through the creation of your own wiki site, and give you the confidence and guidance you need to take your first steps on "the wiki way" (and convince others to join you on the journey).

Material/Resources Required
This is a hands on session. If you have a laptop computer, please bring it along. Two or more participants can share a machine if necessary.

About Stuart Culshaw Stuart Culshaw works for ILOG in Paris as a Web Content Manager and Web 2.0 evangelist. He has lived and worked in Paris since graduating from the European Business Program (Groupe ESC Bordeaux/University of Humberside) in 1993. Stuart has over 15 years experience as a technical communicator and web site developer/project manager and holds a professional certificate in technical writing from the American University of Paris, where he previously taught courses in web design. Stuart is a Past President and current Vice President and Webmaster of the STC France Chapter.

How to Write Use Cases
Presenter: Dr. Jonathan Price, CEO, Communication Circle
Time: 2.00pm - 5.30pm

In this half-day workshop, you'll learn how to write use cases. You'll be able to support your development team much earlier than before, with just-in-time documentation of the requirements, and you'll have more contact with important stakeholders and users, as you help them articulate their needs.

Use cases are like procedures for software that has not yet been coded. Years ago, Jef Raskin wrote a manual for a computer he thought should be created, and that manual served as the initial specification for the Macintosh. Today, use cases let both developers and users find common ground, discussing the way the software should work, and figuring out what it should do, just before the developers create those parts of the evolving system.

Intended Audiences

If you are interested in the way systems get developed, and you are curious about the gap between what users want, and what they get, this workshop will give you a glimpse of a way you can help both groups - developers and users - talk to each other, using your documents.

You will find that if you have written procedures, you will see a lot of parallels. If you have worked with engineers, you will see how the new approaches to the analysis and design process provide an opening for you to contribute more than ever before.

You do not need to have any programming experience. This workshop is aimed at writers, not engineers.

Presentation Outline

Supporting developers in their environment

• Iterative
• Agile
• User-centered
• Object-oriented
• Following the Unified Model
• Using software to trace requirements from need to test cases

Gathering requirements just in time

• Eliciting stakeholder needs
• Conjuring up possible features
• The challenge: writing functional requirements
• How use cases help stakeholders and developers understand functional requirements
• How functional requirements differ from other types of requirements and constraints

Writing Just in Time

• How our work fits into the development process
• Concerns and opportunities

Creating the Use-Case Model

• Identifying all the actors
• Discovering their goals and tasks
• Naming the use cases
• Clarifying the nature of the relationships between each actor and a use case
• Distinguishing a Use-Case Model from an Activity Diagram

Outlining the Individual Use Case

• When to outline
• When not to

Discovering all the Scenarios for a Use Case

• The Happy Day Scenario
• Alternative scenarios
• Deciding how to handle branches

Filling in the Details

• When to write the detailed specs
• Deciding which elements should be required, and which should be optional, for your team
• Identifying the use case
• Naming the use case
• Defining possible statuses for a use case
• Describing the activity briefly
• Listing the relevant actors
• Borrowing features and functional requirements, if they exist
• Defining preconditions
• Writing the basic flow of events, subflows, and alternate flows
• Handling extension points
• Defining postconditions
• Adding an activity diagram

Learning Objectives

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to create the following:

• A rationale for your group adopting use cases
• A use-case model
• An outline of a use case
• A set of scenarios for a use case
• A fully detailed use case

About Dr. Jonathan Price Dr. Jonathan Price has worked with software development teams at major hardware and software companies for 25 years. His clients include America Online, Apple, Cadence, FileMaker, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Sun, and Symantec. He is a Fellow of the STC, and presents regularly at chapter meetings, regional and international conferences. He has published several dozen books, among them How to Communicate Technical Information (Benjamin Cummings), and Hot Text: Web Writing that Works (New Riders). For articles on technical communication, see: www.theprices.com. For articles on web writing, see: www.webwritingthatworks.com.