Elicitation techniques
Elicitation is one of the most important processes in the Development Life Cycle. Anyone that has ever performed elicitation knows that this is not a static phase with a clear ending deadline, on the contrary, it is an ongoing process where the constant is the continuous change. Identifying the sources, gathering information, contrasting it, complementing it, and confirming it are just a few steps that analysts do to discern and understand the real needs of users or customers.
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But, what do we need to know to improve our way to elicit information that later will become requirements?. First of all, we need to know that there is not just one technique that we can use with this purpose but multiple, and they can complement each other. All the techniques available have some core common steps that we need to be aware of: Preparation, Execution, Analysis and Results
- Preparation is about doing all set up to run the elicitation, identify the sources of information, select the technique or techniques to be used, select the questions, the place, the timing.
- Execution is about running the technique itself to gather all the information (data, forms, Outcomes, characteristics, policies), needs and requirements and document this information (in worksheets).
- The analysis is understanding needs by studying the information obtained and identify the patterns if exist and document this information (show the result in charts, workflow, diagrams, pivot tables, collaborative workspaces)
- Results is about accommodating the obtained information into charts, flows, notes that can help the analyst to contrast again with the user and confirm, update or discard the information.
At this point, you may wonder which are the elicitation techniques that are available for an Analyst to gather the requirements. Well, there are a lot, but we will briefly explain some of them.
- Interview: The first one, the Interview. It is possibly the most common elicitation technique used to gather information. Basically, this is a face to face meeting (virtual or presential) where the interviewer (analyst) asks questions to the stakeholders to obtain information. The analyst can use predefined (structured) or not predefined questions (unstructured) in a synchronous or asynchronous way. The idea of the Interview is being able to validate the understanding, collect information about stakeholders’ needs, ask customers and users to state their needs and help uncover conflicting software requirements.
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- Survey The survey is the way to gather information anonymously from a large number of users. The main advantage is that it can be used multiple times with different users. With this technique, you can quickly analyze the responses and obtain insights from users that are generally inaccessible. Depending on what you expect as an analyst, you can add in the survey multiple-choice, open-ended numeric or open-ended questions.
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- Observation is the act of seeing how the users in their workplaces perform their tasks or activities. There are three types: active, when the observer interacts with the user and asks questions or asks for clarifications; passive, when the observer just watches and does not interact with the user. Here you can use metrics (KPIs) located in a process, this allows us to understand specific behaviour and decide how to improve it; participatory, when the observer just does not ask questions but performs the tasks by himself. This technique is really helpful to identify automation opportunities, see how efficient is the user and/or the system and allows to see if the user tasks can be improved by just making the job easier for the user.
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- Focus Group It is a planned group interview to raise issues and ask open-ended questions. It consists of a series of meetings between a moderator and a group of six to twelve people. It aims to obtain user reactions, reveal subjective information and perceptions, explore requirement choices and prioritize requirements. This type of technique requires planning and arranging all the logistics for the sessions, defining ground rules and encouraging interaction.
- Workshop The Workshop is a gathering of selected stakeholders that will work under the guidance of a facilitator to produce and document requirements. This technique allows the definition, refinement and prioritization of user requirements. As same as the Focus Group, this technique requires to set all the logistics and the ground rules to be followed.
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Obstacles at Eliciting
- The reality can be different to the perception
- Every elicitation process is different to the previous ones, so it is important to unlearn to avoid being biased.
- Stakeholders can promote unreal requirements.
