Requirement Elicitation & Techniques

1.0 What is Requirement Elicitation

➢ Definition : Requirements elicitation is the practice of researching and discovering

the requirements of a system from users, customers, and other stakeholders.

➢ The practice is also sometimes referred to as "requirement gathering".

➢ No Requirement can be fully available and gets in to the hands of a Business Analyst.

It is the role & responsibility of a Business analyst to drive and extract all the

possible information from the stakeholders who would create Impact on the Project.

➢ Post extracting all the possible Data it is the skill of a Business Analyst to filter the

information which are only required and eliminating the others.

➢ Requirement elicitation is considered as one of the vital phase of the project , since

what would be the final output , how much impact it will create , how to achieve the

output and several other important factors depends mainly on this phase.

➢ To summarize the Requirement Elicitation is to thoroughly identify the business

needs, risks, and assumptions associated with any given project.

2.0 Elicitation Techniques

➢ There are mainly 4 types of Elicitation techniques. Which are listed below.

▪ Conversational Technique

▪ Collaborative Technique

▪ Cognitive Technique

▪ Observational Technique

2.1 Conversational Technique

➢ The Conversational method is also known as traditional methods or verbal method ,

typically describe the oral communication among two or more people.

➢ Conversation is an ordinary means to express requirements and ideas , via asking questions and replying to the particular questions.

➢ Its main focus is to understand the problem in detail and gather requirements for generic products.

➢ Some of the techniques which falls under this category are explained below.

2.1.1 Interview :

➢ The Business analyst will question the different Stakeholders , to produce the detail

information about the objectives of present work and related problems in the

software.

➢ Using this technique complete view of the system can be collected.

➢ Detailed information of data can be collected using this technique.

2.1.2 Survey / Questioner

➢ Surveys & Questioner are used to collect the required data and information by

unanimously from many people in a short span of time.

➢ It is very cheap in cost and large number of data can be collected but since all the

data provided are unanimous , to arrive at the complete final set of data is not

possible.

➢ However in a very short span of time , very huge amount of data can be collected

using this technique.

2.1.3 Requirement Workshop

➢ A requirements workshop can be defined as a structured and facilitated event for

getting carefully selected stakeholders together to discover, refine, prioritize,

validate and discuss requirements.

➢ A skilled facilitator usually manages workshop sessions.

➢ Some of the merits of conducting workshop are mentioned below.

• Discovering requirements

• Refining requirements

• Prioritizing requirements and

• Scoping requirements

2.1.4 Brainstorming

➢ Brainstorming combines a relaxed, informal approach to problem solving with

lateral thinking. It encourages people to come up with thoughts and ideas that can,

at first, seem a bit crazy.

➢ Some of these ideas can be crafted into original, creative solutions to a problem,

while others can spark even more ideas.

➢ Four rules of Brainstorming are, one, focus on quantity, not quality.… Two, defer

judgment.… Three, welcome far-fetched ideas.… And, finally, four, build on the ideas.

2.2 Collaborative Technique

➢ Collaborative technique is also known as synthetic methods. The Synthetic methods

integrate various communications channels , and suggests models to demonstrate

the characteristics and relationship of the system.

➢ Some of the commonly used collaborative techniques are explained below.

2.2.1 Prototyping

➢ In this technique initial visualization of the system is created which often used to

confirm system requirement.

➢ Using this stakeholders can recognize the real requirements and work flow of actual

system.

➢ It does helps in developing the newly recommended system and also helps to

understand the detailed knowledge of requirements.

2.2.2 JAD

➢ Joint Application Development is a requirement methodology in which stakeholders,

subject matter expert , software architect , developers attend the intense offsite

meetings to work out on project details and business problems.

➢ It helps in establishing the direct communication with the stakeholders.

➢ This Technique is also accommodates the rapid decisions and quickly handles

changes in requirements.

2.2.3 User Scenarios

➢ This technique is also called as Use cases. which represents functional aspects of the

system.

➢ It should specify the sequence of interaction between a system and an external

influences.

➢ During this technique different cases are to be extracted from different

stakeholders.

2.3 Cognitive Technique

➢ It is the technique which make use of present system documentation to capture

requirements.

➢ It discovers expert's acquaintance of current system and obtain requirements from

sequence of assumptions carried out for gather large information about problem

domain.

2.3.1 Document Analysis

➢ Document analysis is a technique that users existing document to collect

requirements of a current system.

➢ By understanding the current documentation significant information can be

identified .

➢ Documenting the requirement will be useful from the beginning to end of the

project as anyone from the project team can refer for their clarification.

2.3.2 Analysis Laddering

➢ In this technique requirements are gathered with the help of structure interview.

➢ The set of questions are arranged in hierarchical order, the success factor for this

approach is dependent stakeholders domain knowledge.

➢ This type of technique will not suit for complex project which has several

requirements.

2.3.3 Card Sorting

➢ In this technique participants sort the set of cards into a cluster where each card is

written with the explanation of domain entities.

➢ Card sorting helps the requirements analyst to collect requirements closer to the

thinking of the intended users.

➢ It certainly helps to identify the low and high level problems that needs to be

addressed.

2.4 Observational Technique

➢ Observational methods gather information by several human actions at the

atmosphere wherever software system.

➢ By observing the pain areas , it would be easy to determine the areas of

improvements and what is the ideal solution to implement the requirement.

2.4.1 Observation

➢ It is also known as the social analysis which collects user requirements by

investigating people performing their normal work.

➢ It is considered as costly technique , since it does involve lot of traveling in order to

observe the actual scenario.

2.4.2 Protocol Analysis

➢ The Stakeholders speak aloud while performing the tasks and the Business analyst

records stakeholder's actions in the form of video , audio & written notes.

➢ Requirement analyst make use of these recording to gather meaningful

requirements for designing any application.

➢ However it is not suitable for larger projects.

3.0 Conclusion

➢ Though there are several techniques available , still choosing the right technique

and implementation the technique in a correct way which makes the whole idea of

elicitation success.