Preferred Requirements Gathering Techniques - 1

Preferred Requirements Gathering Techniques

Following are a set of recommended requirements

elicitation techniques. These techniques can be

used in combination. Their advantages are that they

are effective in emerging the real requirements for

planned development efforts.

Interviews
Interviews are used to gather information. However,

the predisposition, experience, understanding, and

bias of the person being interviewed influence the

information obtained. The use of context-free

questions by the interviewer helps avoid

prejudicing the response . A context-free question

is a question that does not suggest a particular

response. For example, who is the client for this

system? What is the real reason for wanting to

solve this problem? What environment is this

product likely to encounter? What kind of product

precision is required?

Document Analysis
All effective requirements elicitation involves

some level of document analysis such as business

plans, market studies, contracts, requests for

proposals, statements of work, existing guidelines,

analyses of existing systems, and procedures.

Improved requirements coverage results from

identifying and consulting all likely sources of

requirements.

Brainstorming
Brainstorming involves both idea generation and

idea reduction. The goal of the former is to

identify as many ideas as possible, while the

latter ranks the ideas into those considered most

useful by the group. Brainstorming is a powerful

technique because the most creative or effective

ideas often result from combining seemingly

unrelated ideas. Also, this technique encourages

original thinking and unusual ideas.

Requirements Workshops.
Requirements workshops are a powerful technique for

eliciting requirements because they can be designed

to encourage consensus concerning the requirements

of a particular capability. They are best

facilitated by an outside expert and are typically

short (one or a few days). Other advantages are

often achieved -- participant commitment to the

work products and project success, teamwork,

resolution of political issues, and reaching

consensus on a host of topics. Benefits of

requirements workshops include the following:

Workshop costs are often lower than are those for

multiple interviews.
They help to give structure to the requirements

capture and analysis process.
They are dynamic, interactive, and cooperative.
They involve users and cut across organizational

boundaries.
They help to identify and prioritize needs and

resolve contentious issues.
When properly run, they help to manage user's

expectations and attitude toward change

A special category of requirements workshop is a

Joint Application Development (JAD) workshop. JAD

is a method for developing requirements through

which customers, user representatives, and

developers work together with a facilitator to

produce a requirements specification that both

sides support.




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