Examining the use case as genre in software development and documentation

• Authors: Ashley Williams
• Venue: Proceedings of the 21st annual international conference on Documentation
• Year: 2003

The practice of outsourcing among organizations frequently involves external companies or consultants introducing texts (or in rhetorical genre theory terms, genres) as means of transforming work practices in the company who sought expert help from the outside. Such an abrupt-seeming introduction of unfamiliar texts upon workers, either within or across organizations, characterizes a practice I call "genre dumping." This practice, however, contrasts with the rhetorical genre theory perspective that sees genres as typified actions that respond to situations that recur. While such theoretical perspectives may help us understand how genres function and/or evolve in extant situations, they may not be sufficient for describing what happens when texts are imposed upon workers with the purpose of creating situations entirely new to those people and with the expectation that the text type (i.e., genre) will enable the new situation to stabilize and recur over time. For example, in software development, the practice of genre dumping is exemplified by a growing trend in which companies are adopting use cases to learn or begin using object-oriented or iterative design methodologies. In fact, the use case genre features its own large and growing body of literature and is popular for its perceived richness and informality in iterative design approaches. However, much of the use case literature voices problems that can arise with the adoption of use cases. As a means of beginning to assess the function of use cases in a particular software project in which genre dumping has occurred, this paper reports on a descriptive analysis of two use cases used in that project. Discussed here are implications for (a) practice apropos of the use of use cases in development and documentation and (b) theory apropos of notions of generic recurrence and communicative success and the phenomenon of genre dumping.