Scenarios are time-consuming to create
As runtime scenarios are quite time-consuming to create and maintain, focus on:
- the important ones, that are really specific, complex, risky or otherwise interesting.
- scenarios that help designing building blocks or challenge corresponding design decisions.
Use scenarios primarily to identify and discuss building block behavior, and keep only a few scenarios for your documentation.
Keep only a few scenarios in your documentation
Document only scenarios that:
- are crucial to understanding the overall processing within the system, i.e. for the most important functions, features or use-cases,
- are critical for the top-quality goals of the system,
- are especially risky in their implementation,
- involve critical, volatile or unstable external interfaces,
- had been very difficult to implement,
- need special attention by some stakeholders
- etc.
In my (Gernot) experience, it’s perfectly ok to keep just 1-3 scenarios in your documentation - but use several dozens during design and development of the system.