Do these words mean anything to anyone? I've come across mention of them here and there, wondering if there's a breakdown for dummies...

Hi @NerdGirl, In what context are you finding those? Some more info would help to answer appropriately. Are you working on a proposal of some sort? Or is this in some documentation you're reading? -William

I use cases for my guitars... oh, waitta minute. I guess I'd need to see them in context, but first glance makes me think of an SDLC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle The 'Mantra' of a well designed software project is that you basically diagram out everything on paper (or in these days, on screen), document the requirements and deliverables and pretty much specifies every little piece needed to accomplish the goal. The theory (and oddly enough, the reality) is that if you document your project well, you can hand off your requirements documents to 'any' programmer, and they should be able to accomplish it. 'Any' programmer, meaning, Java, iOS, Windows, whatever... That's the 'official' way... most people run pell mell into coding without really determining what they want, including me, lol! Hope this helps! Cheers! -- Smug

To add to what @Smug said, these are concepts I'm familiar with in technical product management. Here's a couple of links for you: http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/resources/Writing-the-Market-Requirements-Document "A requirement is a statement identifying a capability, physical characteristic, or quality factor that bounds a product or process problem for which a solution will be pursued." (The Pragmatic Marketing guys are great!) http://www.accompa.com/product-management-blog/2009/09/19/use-cases-definition-requirements-management-basics/ "A use case is a series of related interactions between a user (or more generally, an “actor”) and a system that enables the user to achieve a goal." I can be dry stuff to read, but it basically relates to the planning and strategizing stages of development, and knowing your audience and market. -William

Just read this: http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Software-Development-Pilone/dp/0596527357 It explains everything.

it's like the strange cinema of applications! Thanks guys ...And smuggy, I like your style :p