requirement elicitation techniques

Requirement elicitation techniques for a BA The main role of a business analyst in a company is to gather requirements from the client, sorting the gathered requirements into functional and non functional requirements, prioritize the requirement and analyzing it. For gathering the requirements the BA uses various Elicitation technique Elicitation techniques are used to dig out information from the stakeholder. It acts as a foundation or base for the procuring the requirement. Below are the elicitation techniques. Brainstorming: this technique is used to generate wide range of ideas and solution or requirements in short amount of time. The participates are introduced to a situation or challenges and they are asked to give a proposed solution for the same. It is a collaborative group technique to get maximum ideas without criticism ̣ Documentation Analysis: This technique involves reviewing of current documents such as business process map, current standards and policies, reports etc to acquire relevant informations and requirement. It is used to understand the current process. Reverse Engineering: Reverse engineering is generally used in Migration Projects. here the system /product has a little or outdated documentation, and it is important to know what the system/product does. So reverse engineering gathers requirements from the system code. There are 2 categories in this ie. Black box reverse engineering in which the system is studied without examining the internal structure and White box reverse engineering where the internal structure is studied. Focus Group: in this technique as small group of stakeholders usually the end user gather together in order to discuss and present their needs for the project or and process there can be homogenous group where all the individual has similar kind of opinion and hetrogenous group with difference of opinion Observation: Sometimes the stakeholders ie the users are not able to communicate their requirement or needs properly. Hence observation technique is used where the requirements need to be gathered only by observing the user working in their natural enviroment. It can be active observation where question can be asked during the work. or passive observation where the BA usually takes the notes and the questions are been asked only after completation of the task. Workshop: Workshop is a structured meeting where the stakeholders and SME comes together for gathering the requirements. This technique is used to gather high- level functional and non-functional requirement. Joint Application Development (JAD): highly structured and collaborative workshop that involves stakeholders and technical team and development team to define system requirement. Interviews: this is a systematic approach to elicate information from the person or group of people. It is a one on one discussion with the stakeholder to gather detail insight about the need. Prototyping: This involves building a simple version of the system that the stakeholder can visualize and interact with. Feedback from the stakeholder are taken into consideration to improve the system. Questionnaires: This technique is used to collect information from large group of stakeholders which can help identify trends and requirements. Use case: Use case defines how the user will interact with the system to achieve a specific goal.