Estimation with Use Cases: Deeper Thoughts

I came across a thought provoking white paper written by John Smith of Rational Software. It's on Estimation of effort based on Use Cases.

If you have ever tried estimation with use cases, you know that the various levels of decomposition encountered in the wild are troublesome. John does an excellent job in conceptualizing this problem.

The article seems to be from 1999, and I'm not sure whether John's ideas made it into the various estimation tools. For me, reading them brought a great deal of clarity in the levels-of-use-cases concept, so I think it's worth reading anyway.