This book has been a long time in the making. It has seen many rewrites and has been influenced by many people. We would like to thank our families, who had to put up with our zany brainstorming and arm-wrestling writing sessions, especially our wives Fariba and Christine, who proofread and edited this text countless times. Also, Elizabeth, Michael, and Rebecca for being patient with their daddy as he wrote on “their” computer.
Alistair Cockburn, Andy Pols, Steve, and Paul jointly put the structure of the pattern language in place in a series of work sessions we loosely termed Bear Plop, Horse Plop, and Bird Plop. Through those sessions, we identified the overall pattern language structure and the initial names, forces, and resolutions for the patterns. Alistair and Andy provided important feedback about the pattern language, as the two of us continued to develop the material for this book.
We are indebted to Linda Rising, who not only reviewed the manuscript, but also offered invaluable help on structuring our patterns and was a great source of encouragement. Linda planted the original seeds for this book, and served as unofficial pattern consultant.
The genesis of this work was the Use Case Pattern Workshop at OOPSLA 98. Our thanks to co-leader Greg Gibson and those who contributed to the founding of this research: John Artim, Ted Lefkovitz, Dr. Ben Lieberman, Susan Lilly, Rick Ratliff, Dan Rawsthorne, and Dr. Liping Zhao. The group did an excellent job identifying the various forces involved in writing and using use cases. We were particularly influenced by Rick's Sans GUI and Breadth First patterns, even though we didn't use these patterns directly in this book.
Early versions of this pattern language were workshopped at ChiliPLoP, and we thank Neil Harrison and David Delano for shepherding us during this part of its development. Neil contributed his Liberating Form pattern, which while not used in this language certainly helped us to understand clearly the benefit of use cases. Kim Lee also made contributions during the ChiliPLoP workshop, and we are indebted to her for her elegant Borodin Quartet pattern. While the pattern is not part of our language, it helped influence our development patterns. We also want to thank Jim Coplien for his encouragement and guidance.
A special thanks goes to Dan Rawsthorne, who was part of the original OOPSLA sessions and who joined us at the ChiliPLoP sessions. He contributed the sections explaining the application of the patterns to UML, helping us wrap up a lot of loose ends.
Reviewers play an important role in the development of any book, and we had good ones: Linda Rising, Dan Rawsthorne, Pete McBreen, Rusty Walters, and Don Olson. Thanks for the good reviews and the constructive advice!
We are also indebted to the following people:
Craig Larman, for introducing Steve Adolph and Paul Bramble to each other.
Joshua Kerievsky, for turning a two-hour flight delay into a wonderful opportunity to understand the Alexandrian pattern form.
David Roberts, for suggesting a Graduate Alternatives pattern which became our PromotedAlternative (p. 190) pattern.
Colleagues and friends Gary Wong and Arsham (Ash) Hamidi, who took time to review early drafts.
The team at Addison-Wesley for their help and patience.
My colleagues at Emperative for their support and their much-appreciated help with proofreading.
Lastly, the people who have influenced our careers, including Dr. Donald Miller and Terry Packer, who helped us believe in ourselves, provided a fertile learning environment, and gave us the freedom to follow our passion.
Steve, Andy, Alistair, and Paul in Colorado.