What is Requirements Elicitation?

Requirements elicitation is the process of identifying the sources of requirements for a new system and obtaining those requirements from those sources.

Potential sources of requirements include users, documents, regulators and even legacy software code.

Requirements elicitation is a crucial part of the Requirements Gathering, Documentation and Analysis Process.

It is a very challenging activity that requires focus and skill from the business analyst.

Whatever elicitation technique you choose and however you implement the technique, you need to do whatever it takes to understand what the real needs of your customers are.

There are many requirements elicitation techniques that may be used in various situations depending on the level of requirements as well as the type of stakeholder.

Each requirements elicitation technique has its advantages and disadvantages.

It is a good idea to gain a mastery of many different elicitation techniques so that you can use a combination of them on the job to successfully draw out your stakeholder needs.

Preparing to Elicit Requirements

Before starting out on your requirements elicitation activities, you should have a plan. Planning your elicitation activities ensures that you:

1. Understand your stakeholders.
2. Use the right elicitation techniques for each stakeholder or stakeholder group.
3. Accurately prioritize the stakeholders and assign the right level of involvement.
4. Allocate adequate time and resources to the requirements gathering activities.
5. Adequately prepare the stakeholders for the elicitation sessions.
6. Gain the trust and cooperation of your stakeholders.

Requirements Elicitation Techniques

Brainstorming

Brainstorming sessions are used to let the stakeholders come up with creative ideas or new approaches to a problem

Workshops

Workshops are facilitated meetings with multiple stakeholders.

Interviewing

Interviews are in-person, one-on-one meetings where the business analyst asks questions to get information from the stakeholder.

With an interview you can quickly obtain a lot of requirements from one person. However, you still need to examine those requirements to make sure they do not conflict with other stakeholder needs.

Surveys

Surveys are used to gather information anonymously from the stakeholders.

Documentation Review

This is the process of obtaining requirements from written documentation such as manuals.

Prototyping

This is the use of partially finished versions of the software that have been created to help validate requirements.

Focus Groups

Focus Groups are group interviews with potential and/or actual users where the business analyst raises issues and questions to obtain information from the stakeholders.

Focus groups are a collaborative technique that lets you gather a lot of information. It includes a measure of brainstorming which is good when the users don’t know what they really want or need from the system.

Observation

Observation is when the business analyst watches the users performing their daily tasks and asks questions about the tasks and work. This technique gives you the advantage of actually seeing what the users do as they work as opposed to what they tell you they do.

Observation helps the analyst develop a real understanding of the user’s on the job issues.

A good business analyst should have excellent skills choosing and using the right elicitation technique for each situation.

If you are not familiar with using some of these elicitation techniques, consider signing-uo for the Business Analyst Boot Camp Training and increase your value to your organization by your ability to elicit complete, correct, consistent, clear, concise and feasible requirements.

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