This document discusses techniques for requirements elicitation for data discovery. It provides an overview of fundamental and supplementary elicitation techniques including interviews, workshops, observation, scenario modeling, prototyping, focus groups, surveys, special purpose records, activity sampling, and document analysis. For each technique, it discusses advantages and disadvantages. The document emphasizes that analysts should use a combination of techniques tailored to each situation rather than relying on a single method.

1. www.businesschange.academy 1
DAMA South Africa
Presented by Joe Newbert
18 July 2019
Requirements
Elicitation Techniques
For Data Discovery

2. Email: joe.newbert@bcmg.co.za
Twitter: @newbert
LinkedIn: /in/newbert
Joe Newbert
Chief Training office
Business Change Academy
www.businesschange.academy
About Your Speaker02

3. Business analysts have a range of investigation techniques at their disposal. From these, they must select the ones
that are likely to be most effective on this project, in this organisation, with these people. A ‘toolbox’ approach is
needed, choosing the tool that best meets the needs of each situation.
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What we’ll cover03
2
Fundamental
elicitation
techniques
Supplementary
elicitation
techniques
4
Set of context for
requirements
elicitation
Quantitative
elicitation
techniques
1 4

4. Life-Cycle for Business Change06
Define project and
prepare business case
Align strategy,
environment and
architecture
Design detailed
business change
projects
Implement, test and
operationalise change
Realise and measure
business benefits
BUSINESS CASE
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5. www.businesschange.academy 5
Holistic thinking05
Process
People
InformationTechnology
Organisation
ORGANISATION
Structure, responsibilities,
boundaries, resources,
relationships
PROCESS
Complexity, sensibility, communication,
hand-offs, redundancy
PEOPLE
Recruitment, training,
appraisal, development,
motivation/reward
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Accessibility, relevance, integration,
usable, adaptable/scalable

6. 1. Interview
2. Workshop
3. Observation
4. Scenario modelling
5. Prototyping
6. Focus Groups
7. Surveys (Questionnaires)
8. Special Purpose Records
9. Activity Sampling
10.Document Analysis
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Investigation techniques08

7. • Time consuming to organise, conduct and
document
• Expensive, particularly where users are widely
geographically distributed
• Demanding in terms of the interviewee’s time
• Representative of an opinion, which will need to
be evaluated using quantitative date
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Interview – pros and cons15
• Build rapport with business users
• Understand user’s perspectives
• Explore detailed requirements
• Collect appropriate documents that the business
use
• Detect any ‘political’ issues and tensions.
• Study the physical environment in which the new
system will operate
Advantages Disadvantages

8. • Time consuming to organise, as it is often difficult
to get all the required people together
• Inappropriate when senior users are unable or
unwilling to attend. Consequently decisions are
reversed after the workshop
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Workshop – pros and cons21
• Gain a broader and more complete understanding
of the area under consideration
• Reduce time and increase productivity
• A workshop is much quicker than one-on-one
interviewing
• Gain a consensus view and ownership of a group
agreement
• Decisions should be better as they are subjected
to immediate quality test
• Everyone gains a better overall perspective of the
problem situation
Advantages Disadvantages

9. • Observation can be time consuming
• People may change the way that they work
because they are being observed. They may ‘work
to rules’ rather than work as they normally would
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Observation – pros and cons24
• The analyst gains deeper understanding of the
work environment
• Observation helps build rapport with business
users
• Identifies tacit knowledge requirements
Advantages Disadvantages

10. • Time consuming to develop
• Can become too complex, leading to complicated
diagrams and user confusion
• May dwell too long on scenarios which are
unlikely to happen
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Scenario modelling – pros and cons26
• Forces users to define every step, so identifies
tacit knowledge
• Helps explore alternatives at an early stage in
requirements elicitation
• Provides sufficient detail for the construction of
text scripts
Advantages Disadvantages

11. • Too many versions of the prototype can cause the
project to spin out of control
• Users may want to use the prototype immediately
and are unaware that it is incomplete
• It may be difficult to replicate the appearance and
performance of the prototype in the real system
Simple prototypes may give negative impression
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Prototyping – pros and cons28
• Helps users clarify requirements that they have
difficulty in defining
• Identifies new opportunities and requirements
that the users could not envisage
• Allows the user to experience the ‘look and feel’
of the proposed software solution
• Permits the user to assess overall usability and
system performance
• Allow users to experience the scenario that they
have defined in detail
Advantages Disadvantages

12. • Time consuming to organise, as it is often difficult
to get all the required people together
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Focus group – pros and cons30
• Group’s ideas are analysed in relation to the
stated requirements
• may also be used once the system has been
developed prior to deployment (or product
launch) where the group’s report could influence
how best to deploy the system or how to position
the product in the market.
• A focus group may also serve to assess customer
satisfaction with a product or service or to
provide direction on the revisions to the next
release of requirements
Advantages Disadvantages

13. • Difficult to ask questions which require which
require more than easily clarified answers
• The analyst cannot ask supplementary questions
to clarify an answer or explore an alternative
• The analyst cannot observe or experience the
user’s work environment
• Most importantly, non-respondents to
questionnaire may be very different to
respondents – hence conclusions may be false
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Surveys – pros and cons33
• They can be used to anonymously collect data
about views and behaviour
• Suited to the collection of detailed quantitative
data that requires users to look up documents
and records
• Provides standardised responses from a wide
range of respondents
Advantages Disadvantages

14. • Users may forget to record data and so invent
values
• it is not very popular – especially if people do not
complete timesheets routinely
• it is not very accurate – you cannot realistically
ask people to note down periods of less
• than, say, half an hour as some will forget to do it
until the end of the day anyway, and
• people are not very likely to record time during
which they are not working – which leads to
distorted and inaccurate results.
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Special purpose records – pros and cons35
• Special purpose records consume less of the
analysts time
Advantages Disadvantages

15. • Time consuming to organise, conduct and
document
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Activity sampling - pros and cons37
• Provide valuable quantitative data to set
alongside the more qualitative information gained
through talking to people
• Help to identify pinch-points, work overloads and
so forth
• Performed by the business analyst, so it is not
prone to errors and fabricated values made by
users
• Analysing jobs and tasks may help build a business
case as it may highlight cost and time savings
• Again, activity sampling is used to collect data not
routinely available in the organisation
Advantages Disadvantages

16. • Time consuming
• May not have been completed correctly
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Document analysis - pros and cons39
• The usage of the documents helps with the
identification of the processes and information
flows
• The information recorded can provide valuable
insights into the data used by the organisation –
information which we may use at a later point if
we decide to build a model of the data
Advantages Disadvantages

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The very best
technique is to
combine your
techniques.

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What Questions do You Have?44

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