ContextUse cases have been widely accepted and acknowledged as a specification tool for specifying the functional requirements of a software system. Many variations of use cases exist which tries to address the issues such as their completeness, degree of formalism, automated information extraction, usability, and pertinence. ObjectiveThe aim of this systematic review is to examine the existing literature for the evolution of the use cases, their applications, quality assessments, open issues, and the future directions. MethodWe perform keyword-based extensive search to identify the relevant studies related to use case specifications research reported in journal articles, conference papers, workshop papers, bulletins and book chapters. ResultsThe specified search process resulted 119 papers, which were published between 1992 and February 2014. This included, 54 journal articles, 42 conference papers, 2 ACM/IEEE bulletins, 12 book chapters, 6 workshop papers and 3 white papers. We found that as many as twenty use case templates have been proposed and applied for various software specification problems ranging from informal descriptions with paragraph-style text to more formal keyword-oriented templates. ConclusionUse cases have been evolved from initial plain, semi-formal textual descriptions to a more formal template structure facilitating automated information extraction in various software development life cycle activities such as requirement documentation, requirement analysis, requirement validation, domain modeling, test case generation, planning and estimation, and maintenance. The issues that remain to be sorted out are (1) the right degree of formalism, (2) the efficient change management, (3) the industrial relevance, and (4) assessment of the quality of the specification. Additionally, its synergy with other software models that are used in the development processes is an issue that needs to be addressed.