Use Cases vs Requirements

I'm about a quarter of the way through MCPD 70-547 Designing and Developing Web-Based Applications using Microsoft .NET Framework, I have already picked up some good tips. One that comes to mind is about Use Cases and Requirements.

Mike Snell talks about why you need both use cases and requirements. His mentions a real world example, in which he takes two projects. One project captures the requirements in the form of use cases only and the other with solely requirements. Mike wrote the other half (in the use case project he wrote the requirements and in the requirements project he wrote the use cases), he found that:

• Requirements that were written using the use cases were open to interpretation. This often meant key requirements were missed.
• A project containing use cases can be quickly translated into test cases.

Requirements serve one purpose and use cases serve another. To fully capture the requirements you need both.

I would recommend reading this book, even if you don't want to take the exam.