"Writing Effective Use Cases" (Addison-Wesley; ISBN 0-201-70225-8) by Alistair Cockburn is a book by an outspoken object technologist. All past Use Cases books bored me to tears. The other ones I have read tend to be very process intensive.

The first chapter covers what is a Use Case. It is the cleanest definition of use cases I have seen. This book showed me where I had been going wrong with my understanding of use cases. I had been too focused on the UML diagrams. Alistair explains that the really important part is text not diagrams in use cases.

The first major part of the book goes through the different parts of use cases. The second part is topics that are frequently discussed. The last part is reminders of what to do.

The book is full of pragmatic advice. It is also the least boring use case book I have ever seen. However, I couldn't overcome my internal feelings to fully embrace this book. That's my problem not the book's.

I feel that this is the best book on use cases on the market. I would recommend it strongly to requirements analysts.