It is all about obtaining information from stakeholders. In other words, once the business analysis has communicated with stakeholders for understanding their requirements, it can be described as elicitation. It can also be described as a requirement gathering.
Requirement elicitation can be done by communicating with stakeholders directly or by doing some research, experiments. The activities can be planned, unplanned, or both.
Planned activities: include workshops, experiments.
Unplanned activities: happen randomly. Prior notice is not required for such activities. For example, you directly go to the client site and start discussing the requirements however there was no specific agenda published in advance.
1. Brainstorming:
This technique is used to generate new ideas and find a solution for a specific issue. The members included for brainstorming can be domain experts, subject matter experts. Multiple ideas and information give you a repository of knowledge and you can choose from different ideas.
This session is generally conducted around the table discussion. All participants should be given an equal amount of time to express their ideas.
Brainstorming technique is used to answer the below questions:
What is the expectation of a system?
What are the risk factors that affect the proposed system development and what to do to avoid that?
What are the business and organization rules required to follow?
What are the options available to resolve the current issues?
What should we do so that this particular issue does not happen in the future?
There are some basic rules for this technique which should be followed to make it a success:
The time limit for the session should be predefined.
Identify the participants in advance. One should include 6-8 members for the session.
The agenda should be clear enough for all the participants.
Clear expectations should be set with the participants.
Once you get all the information, combine the ideas, and remove the duplicate ideas.
Once the final list is ready, distribute it among other parties.
Benefits:
Creative thinking is the result of the brainstorming session.
Plenty of ideas in a short time.
Promotes equal participation.
Drawbacks:
Participants can be involved in debating ideas.
There can be multiple duplicate ideas.
2. Document Analysis:
This technique is used to gather business information by reviewing/examining the available materials that describe the business environment. This analysis is helpful to validate the implementation of current solutions and is also helpful in understanding the business need.
Document analysis includes reviewing the business plans, technical documents, problem reports, existing requirement documents, etc. This is useful when the plan is to update an existing system. This technique is useful for migration projects.
This technique is important in identifying the gaps in the system i.e. to compare the AS-IS process with the TO-BE process. This analysis also helps when the person who has prepared the existing documentation is no longer present in the system.
Benefits:
Existing documents can be used to compare current and future processes.
Existing documents can be used as a base for future analysis.
Drawbacks:
Existing documents might not be updated.
Existing documents might be completely outdated.
Resources worked on the existing documents might not be available to provide information.
This process is time-consuming.
3. Reverse engineering:
This elicitation technique is generally used in migration projects. If an existing system has outdated documentation, it can be reverse engineered to understand what the system does. This is an elicitation technique that can extract implemented requirements from the system.
There are two types of reverse engineering techniques.
Black box reverse engineering: The system is studied without examining its internal structure (function and composition of software).
White box reverse engineering: The inner workings of the system are studied (analysing and understanding of software code).
4. Focus Group:
By using a focus group, you can get information about a product, service from a group. The Focus group includes subject matter experts. The objective of this group is to discuss the topic and provide information. A moderator manages this session.
The moderator should work with business analysts to analyse the results and provide findings to the stakeholders.
If a product is under development and the discussion is required on that product then the result will be to update the existing requirement or you might get new requirements. If a product is ready to ship then the discussion will be on releasing the product.
How Focus groups are different than group interviews?
A Focus group is not an interview session conducted as a group; rather it is a discussion during which feedback is collected on a specific subject. The session results are usually analysed and reported. A focus group typically consists of 6 to 12 members. If you want more participants then create more than one focus group.
5.Observation:
This elicitation technique helps in collecting requirements by observing users or stakeholders. This can provide information about the exiting process, inputs and outputs. There are two kinds of observations ? active and passive.
In active observation, the business analyst directly observes the users or stakeholders, whereas in passive observation the business analyst observes the subject matter experts.
This helps the business team understand the requirements when users are unable to explain requirements clearly.
6. Workshop:
Workshops comprise a group of users or stakeholders working together to identify requirements. A requirement workshop is a structured way to capture requirements. Workshops are used to scope, discover, define, and prioritize requirements for the proposed system.
They are the most effective way to deliver high-quality requirements quickly. They promote mutual understanding and strong communication between users or stakeholders and the project team.
7.JAD (Joint Application Development):
Joint Application Development (JAD) technique is an extended session to the workshop. In the JAD session stakeholders and project team works together to identify the requirements. These sessions allow the business team to gather and consolidate large amounts of information. Identification of stakeholders is the critical to the overall success of the JAD session. The JAD team includes business process owners, client representatives, seers or stakeholders, business analysts, project managers, IT experts (developers, quality assurance, designers, and security).
8. Interview:
An interview is a systematic approach to elicit information from a person or group of people. In this case, the business analyst acts as an interviewer. An interview provides an opportunity to explore and/or clarify requirements in more detail. Without knowing the expectations and goals of the stakeholders it is difficult to fulfil requirements.
9. Prototyping:
Screen mock-ups can support the requirement gathering process, when introduced at the correct time. Mock-ups help stakeholders visualize the functionality of a system. This can be an advantage to business analysts and stakeholders since this allows them to identify gaps/problems early on.
10. Surveys/Questionnaires:
Questionnaires are useful when there is a lot of information to be gathered from a larger group of stakeholders. This enables the business team to gather requirements from stakeholders remotely. The design of the questionnaire is very important, since it can influence the answers that people provide.
In addition to the above-mentioned elicitation techniques, there are many more are on the market. It is very difficult to say that which elicitation technique is suitable for all projects. Not all elicitation techniques can be executed for every project.
When selecting an elicitation method, factors such as the nature of the project, organizational structure and type of stakeholders are taken into account by the business team before deciding which technique works best. Having said that, brainstorming, document analysis, interviews, prototyping and workshops are the most widely used requirement elicitation techniques.
