• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer

Shaping Software

Enduring Ideas in the Realm of Software

  • About
  • Topics
  • Best Software Engineering Books
  • Lessons in Software
  • Archives
  • JD Meier.com

What’s a Scenario

Oct 11, 2008 by JD
WhatsAScenario
Photo by Wonderlane

What’s a scenario?  Not everybody uses the term “scenario” the same way.  In the software industry, there’s three common usages of scenario:

  1. The same as a use case.
  2. A path through a use case.
  3. An instance of a use case.
Usually, the most helpful one is “an instance of a use case.”  Why?  Because if a scenario is an instance of a use case, then it’s testable with concrete data.
 
Lessons Learned at Microsoft
At Microsoft, when there’s a customer challenge to solve, it’s common to ask “what’s the scenario?”  This simply means, what’s the context or what is the customer trying to accomplish.  This could be macro-level, end-to-end scenario, or it could be a micro-level, more fine-grained scenario.  Knowing the scenario is key since you can’t evaluate an architecture in a vacuum.  Context is everything.
 
My Related Posts
  • Scenario Types and Their Usage
  • Context-Precision
Category: Project-Management, RequirementsTag: Design, Project-Management, Requirements, Scenarios

About JD

Previous Post:What is Systems Architecture
Next Post:Scenario and Feature Frame

Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Best Software Books of All Time According to a Microsoft Exec
  • How To Effectively Pitch a Business Idea (Customer, Problem, Competition, and Success)
  • Customer-Connected Engineering at patterns & practices
  • Lessons in Software Development from Eric Brechner
  • Best Practices at patterns & practices

Popular Posts

Best Software Engineering Books
Best Practices for Project Management
Best Practices for Software Development
Customer-Connected Engineering
How To Frame Problems Better
How To Pitch Business Ideas Better
How To Structure Vision Scope Presentations
Intro to Lean Software Development
Lean Principles for Software Development
The Enterprise of the Future