Mind Map Options: Software development

Brief explanations of what essential use cases and mind maps are and just one example, but this method can be useful at least to speed starting discussions. Original from http://2005.reconf.de.

Requirements gathering - or, in an agile context, gathering user stories - is always a challenging phase in software development. There are no standard processes or notations defined, only the understanding that the primary factors that make this phase effective are communication and facilitation skills. In this article, Kenji Hiranabe proposes using mind maps that focus on those primary factors when exploring user wishes. Then he takes this concept one step further and models the results with UML.

By Robert Sabourin (project manager, adjunct professor of software engineering at McGill University, book author) - 2,500 words - 7 mind maps

This article tells how the author uses mind maps to help in three different test design areas: to define equivalence classes, to identify usage scenarios and to identify quality factors.

An equivalence class is a set of tests that test the same thing. All tests in an equivalence class expose the same bugs. Whenever I test an application, I use equivalence classes to help choose what data and conditions to exercise under test. It provides good test coverage while reducing the number of test cases.

I use mind maps to visually represent equivalence classes so I can decide where to focus my testing. Normally I try to identify as many classes as I can, and then, depending on how much effort I choose to invest, I select the equivalence classes that offer me the most value as a tester.

I use a three-step approach to create a mind map for an equivalence class:

Identify the variables.
Identify classes based on application logic, input, and memory (AIM).
Identify invalid classes.