Freemind and other mind mappers as a Use Case tool

This is just a quick post to say how effective I find doing use cases in a mind mapping tool. I keep thinking there should be something better or more "professional." I use Freemind, which is both free and open source.

I find mind maps to be effective for creating use cases because I am able to think freely, being unconstrained by format and structure. When your are ready for it the structure and formatting can be added.

I also find that I can easily make links to alternative flows within a use case using node to node hyperlinks. For example, in the main flow I can create an internal jump to another node that represents alternate flow #1 and so on.

Freemind is great because it supports an extensive array of export formats, and since it's free there is no reason that teammates and colleagues can't read your maps.

Here is a screen shot of a use case document which is about 10 minutes old and still a work in progress.