Approach 3: User Function Coverage

USoft applications are data-intensive information systems. One helpful way to describe and structure them is to enumerate all the Things Users Can Do. These things come roughly in two kinds.

At one end of the spectrum, developers spend a lot of time making sure the system performs the task, and all the end user does is push a button. Examples include printing or generating a specific report, or placing an order with a remote web service provider.

At the other end, users interact with data in database tables directly. In many such cases, developers need to do little more than leverage USoft's RAD capability. Examples may include such functionality as Query Order, New Order or Insert Order, Update Order and Delete Order.

What these user functions have in common is that you need to design and supply access interfaces (menu items, screens, buttons...) and related authorization arrangements for each of them.

This way of viewing and describing the target system is a great help when it comes to verifying that all the functionality, authorization and access points are (still) there, especially in test situations.

To use this approach in USoft TeamWork:

·	Enter user functions as individual Business Process Steps. Implement related authorization, data structures and access interfaces as Rules belonging to these Business Process Steps.

Using this approach, Sequence Numbers are not systematically used to organize subsequent process steps in sequences. Rather, you are likely to classify Business Process Steps by higher-level area, topic or functional user group, such as all the functions performed by a specific department in the organization. A good sequence order for direct data interaction functions is Create, Query, Update, Delete, since this is a rough representation of the life-cycle of the manipulated data.