6.22. History
The idea of use cases to describe functional requirements was introduced in 1986 by Ivar Jacobson [Jacobson92], a main contributor to the UML and UP. Jacobson's use case idea was seminal and widely appreciated. Although many have made contributions to the subject, arguably the most influential and coherent next step in defining what use cases are and how to write them came from Alistair Cockburn (who was trained by Jacobson), based on his earlier work and writings stemming from 1992 onwards [e.g., Cockburn01].