Importance of Requirement Elicitation Technique for Business Analysts

Requirement Elicitation is the process of gathering requirements. It is very important in the Requirement gathering phase. It helps in gathering the business requirement from the client and stakeholders. It provides the expected business requirement which are further classified in functional requirements. Functional requirement are the core of any product or platform as it explain the major features, functionalities and features of the product, which helps in achieving the business goal. There are 11 different types of Requirement Elicitation techniques and they help gathering the requirement based on various situations and circumstances. 1. Brainstorming - Brainstorming is a group discussion among the clients and stakeholders to gather a lot of ideas quickly. During Brainstorming, a facilitator presents the problems and the participants suggests the idea. 2. Document Analysis - It is a process where the BA reviews the already existing Documenting like Business requirement document, functional requirement document, supplementary solution document, Software requirement specification and reports to understand the current systems and workflows, It helps in saving time and understand the existing requirements. 3. Reverse Engineering - It is used in migration projects and the BA understand the project by studying the system. White Box reverse engineering - Studying the system by examining the code, designs and database. Black box reverse Engineering - Understanding the system by navigating the screens and pages, input and output and behaviour of the application. 4. Focus Groups - It is a group decision with selected users to collect the opinions and expectations. Helps in understanding the diverse opinions and client expectations. Homogenous Focus Groups - A group decision with same group of people. Heterogenous Focus Groups - A group decision with different group of people. 5.Observation Technique - In this process, the BA observes, asks questions or watches the users perform the daily activities to understand and gather requirements. Active observation Technique - Understand the process by asking questions directly. Passive Observation - Understanding the process by asking minimal questions and only observing the daily activities. 6. Workshops - It is interactive meeting the clients to gather, refine and prioritize requirements. During workshops, activities will be performed to make the requirements more easier to understand and after that there will be questions and answer sessions for further clarifications on the requirements. 7. Joint Application Development - During JAD sessions, BA, users, stakeholders and experienced facilitator collaborate together to clarify the requirements. During the JAD, an experience stakeholder will clarify requirement, these experience stakeholders can be from Tech team, SME or SPOCs. 8. Interview - It is a systematic one on one approach of asking questions related to the requirements and documenting the same. Structured Interview - Asking questions from already prepared questions. Unstructured Interview - Asking question based the progress of the interview. 9. Prototyping - During this technique, the BA creates sample model using tools such as Axure RP and Balsmiq to showcase how the actual model would look. In this way, client can visualize the product or platform and provide feed backs for refinements. 10. Surveys - It is a technique where a list of questions are sent to the Stakeholders, so that the Stakeholders can answers these questions by selecting single choices. By this process, the needs of the Stakeholders are understood and requirements are gathered. 11. Use case specification - It is a process that describes how users interact with the system to achieve a business goal. It explain what steps to be performed, what conditions to be followed and out come of the action.