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Using RUP methodolgy, when doing "finding actors and use cases" and "specification of use cases" activities, we are recommended not to think about how we are going to build the system (take design decisions).

But later when doing the design discipline activities sometimes we find some design decisions lead to changes in the scope of the system, normally including secondary actors and new paths in some use case specification.

For example:

We are building a system that send documents to signers when a primary actor requests that. During the design phase, when thinking about how to build the system, we found it is a good idea to use some existing signer provider.

Now the system we are building is going to send the document to the signer provider and the signer provider will manage the sign process with the signer.

So responsibility is moved to this new secondary actor. Then we need to specify the interaction between this secondary actor and the system we are building, as specifying what happens when the signer provider fails communicating our system some event etc. Should we update the requirements artifacts and show them to the users and client? Is this situation common?.

geocodezip
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MABC
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1 Answers1

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The basic business requirement is that documents should be signed electronically. The fact you have decided to use a third party solution does not change the business requirement. At the end of the interaction you have a signed document, thus satisfying the business requirement.

This changes your functional design for sure, but no changes need to be made for the business requirements.

Your use case diagrams would need to be updated. Utilizing a third party provider for signing documents will affect scope, but I would think it should not increase scope. I would assume using the third party provider solves more problems than it introduces, so it should decrease scope. If using this solution is an increase in scope then either the initial estimate of scope was way off or you should roll your own solution for digitally signing documents, because this other solution is costing you more.

Greg Burghardt
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