The most basic use case includes an actor and a main flow. The actor is the person or thing taking the action and the main flow is the sequential steps that must take place to complete the action. It can be painstakingly slow to capture use case details in an easy-to-understand and presentable format using MS Visio or another diagramming tool. That’s one reason why this use case mind map is my favorite. During meetings where use cases are defined, you can make updates in real time to this mind map. Using a drag and drop capability, you can move subtopic details around with ease. You can list all the tasks that should take place within the main flow, then organize the tasks in the order in which you want the tasks to be completed. Doing so will save business analysts hours upon hours of time creating and refining use cases.

      Using mind maps is a way to manage yourself and manage others. If your organization requires use cases to be in a MS Word or MS Visio format, I urge you to adopt a tool like Mindomo and store your use cases as Mindomo files. Replace Word templates and Visio documents with mind map files. If keeping the use cases as Mindomo file types poses a concern for your organization, simply save these mind maps as PDFs or in another format.

      Technology Tool Tip

      Use these tips to make the most of mind mapping tools:

      •Use mind mapping tools to organize your thoughts and to visualize your strategy, scope and big picture. Also use them to manage your work and the work of others.

      •Check out Mindomo (www.mindomo.com), XMind (www.xmind.net) and Lucidchart (www.lucidchart.com).