The Use Case Library consists of a set of user narratives. Each narrative captures one set of highly-related scientific objectives and is achieved by a series of user epics. Each epic is enabled by a set of user stories, which are technically-focused details about how to achieve that epic. User stories will often be shared among different epics.
The Use Case Library also provides a set of high level summaries that capture the essential scientific objectives and place them in the context of larger goals and the Consortium timelines.
Scientific objective: a description of a scientific process, told without reference to a specific technology solution. Focuses on resources required, method(s) followed, and outcome(s) targeted. Can be validated with scientific stakeholders (is this valuable as written? Yes or no.) Note: These are currently found inside the corrosponding narrative.
Persona: a type of user who will appear in the epics and stories that follow.
Use Case Summary: a high-level, non-technical description of an entire Use Case. The user in each summary has a name, a problem, and both proximate and ultimate goals.
User Narrative: a collection of related personas, objectives, epics and stories.
User Epic: a story, told from the user's perspective that captures a valuable set of interactions with tools (e.g. software solutions) in the service of achieving the scientific objective. Must be written in terms that are meaningful to the user, preferably from their perspective. This can be thought of as one in a series of medium scale tasks that must be completed to answer the question posed in the scientific objective. It should include mentions of everything the user needs to achieve their goal, even interactions that don't involve the software or data from the Data Commons.
User Story: a specific piece of an epic that translates to a well-scoped and defined piece of software or data engineering work. These should be small tasks that can be verified with engineering teams (Did we deliver it? Yes or no.) A collection of user stories can be grouped to complete a larger task in a user epic. Certain stories are likely to appear in multiple epics and should not be duplicated if possible.