[eluser]meovino[/eluser]
[quote author="Jay Callicott" date="1219219312"]I wish we mocked up everything at my full time job like we do in my part-time job. The 2 approaches are very different. At work we rarely get any mockups but often get pretty detailed specs from the PM with sometimes a UML diagram which is certainly helpful. I think visually so I prefer PSD mockups like we do consistently with my part-time business.[/quote]
Mockups are always worth the time spent doing. If your full-time employer doesn't mind spending some money, look into a tool like Axure. I'm still in our demo period, but we are already writing up the PO to buy five licenses of it. The amount of time it's saving us farther downstream is well worth $539/seat. There's nothing like putting a client in front of a wireframe they can interact with. All those hidden requirements start surfacing quickly (instead of coming up during user acceptance testing).
For large projects, use cases are worth the time and effort. We've never been able to get decent requirements out of our clients without them.