Could UML use User Scenario diagrams?

Question

Surely you are familiar with UML class diagrams and object diagrams and their relationships. Object diagrams are used to model objects and their relations in a system, which for class based object oriented programming languages means modeling concrete objects of different classes.

When working on a project I had to create use cases (diagrams) and personas (as in user experience design) and I think they are in same relationship as classes and objects - instantion (instance of). Also use cases as understood in Unified Process (which is somewhat coupled with UML) are sets of scenarios with one main scenario (flow). So concrete scenario, as for example in Behaviour Driven Development is an instance of an use case.

Do you think this makes sense? Would you appreciate User Scenario Diagrams in UML for modeling personas and user scenarios, which could be used e.g. for generation of user acceptance tests as in BDD?

Answer 1

I'm guilty of over-using UML (1) in the past, including Use Case diagrams as a part of the specification.

My advise (based on experience) is that a pure textual representation, that's also executing using a BDD framework, provides the highest value/effort ratio.

1. I'm old enough to have experienced the CASE tool movement. <shiver />