one rant about language
March 3, 2011
Books on analysis tell the programmer that use cases should be in the domain experts language. But where does the programmer learn that domain language? If it were in French wouldn’t we want to suggest the programmers learn French, like ASAP?
It doesn’t help that a system often has multiple user groups, each with their own language. Different user groups may need access to the same functions so there should be multiple cases of use. And each of them in “English” if in different domain languages. It might easier if the language were more obviously distinct, like French and German rather than accountingese and warehousese.
On the other side, we draw use case diagrams and don’t bother to teach all the users how to read them. How can we get feedback and fixes? I know people who are intimidated by the diagrams making it all the harder to discuss the content. And the software needed to display it (yeah, I know, just print it) is often so expensive, we’re reluctant to spend a seat license for a user copy, so the users have to come to us, to our machines to see the diagram, the psychological message being that this is our system, not theirs.
