The term CRUD relates to
transactions (not goals) that maintain a database of information, be it a manual or automated repository. Processing these transactions is very low level use case stuff and is not of much interest to stakeholders; because they have difficulty relating these transactions to business goals...they see it is somehow needed, but they can't assign much value to it beyond its being a necessary evil and a cost of doing business. They don't see CRUD as a competitive weapon that adds value to the business proposition. Therefore, they will not become fully engaged with you on repository issues, they will "leave all of that stuff to you" to figure out on your own.
Lets consider a sales system.
Obviously, the system needs to create account records for new customers in the data base. But ask yourself why?? Is it because:
- The business needs to define the terms of its business relationship with that customer?
- The business wants to communicate those terms to employees?
- These terms impact the processing of customer orders
- etc.?
The high level goal of the business is to make persistent & available the defined terms of doing business with a given customer and to apply those terms as policy governing on-going interactions with that customer. The goals define
what is to be achieved, not
how the system achieves it.
This "stuff" about defining business relationships and policy that governs business transactions is the heart and sole of what a manager does and they will become fully engaged in that discussion.
If you say to a stakeholder, in a use case, that the system will create and store an account master record in the database, the stakeholder's eyes will cross and they will nod their head knowingly and say "fine".
If, on the other hand, you say that the system will record the terms of the business relationship, the stakeholder will want to discuss specify, just what kind of terms you are dealing with.
In my mind CRUD is not a business goal, making critical information persistent and available is a business goal. As I said before, restate CRUD in business terms, not EDP terms; you'll get better funding for your project that way.
