Requirements Elicitation Techniques - Simply Put! Helping Stakeholders Discover and Define Requirements for IT Projects

Requirement elicitation is the first step in gathering user requirements; it is the process of understanding and acquiring the business needs of all involved stakeholders. The importance of requirements elicitation cannot be overstated. The requirements you elicit and gather are the foundation for the remainder of ALL of the work on the project.

This book is a continuation of our Requirements Elicitation series. The previously published "Requirements Elicitation Interviews and Workshops - Simply Put" deals with soft skills needed to elicit requirements. This book, "Requirements Elicitation Techniques - Simply Put", is all about specific techniques designed to improve the outcomes of your elicitation interviews and workshops.

The presented techniques will help practicing business analysts, future business analysts, subject matter experts, managers, product owners, project managers, and anyone responsible for getting the right requirements from the right people.

Many people elicit requirements in an organization under the guise of 'business analysis' although it is not in their job description. Whether you are the CEO, COO, Director, Manager, or on the front lines, you may be involved in defining how technology can benefit you and your organization. When you are in that awesome role, you are at that time "the one wearing the Business Analysis (BA) hat".

So what are you going to learn? This book presents the nuts and bolts of "requirements elicitation" which will help you:

• Identify potential stakeholders early in the project
• Manage the requirements elicitation process with a Question File
• Recognize, track, and report progress toward requirements completion
• Define, document, and analyze business problems to ferret out hidden requirements
• Facilitate effective requirements brainstorming sessions to uncover additional requirements
• Use 10 critical questions to initiate the requirements elicitation process
• Capture and communicate assumptions about your requirements
• Avoid "analysis paralysis" by recognizing when it is time to stop eliciting and start deciding

About the Authors

Angela and Tom Hathaway have authored and delivered hundreds of training courses and publications for business analysts around the world. They have facilitated hundreds of Requirements Gathering Workshops for information technology projects under a variety of acronyms (JAD, ASAP, JADr, JRP, etc.).

Based on their personal journey and experiences reported by their students, they recognized how much anyone can benefit from improving their requirements elicitation skills. Their mission is to allow anyone, anywhere access to simple, easy-to-learn techniques by sharing their experience and expertise in their training seminars, blogs, eBooks, video courses, and public presentations.