Course Project Part 3—Elicitation Techniques In Week 1 , you discussed the syste
ID: 3600581 • Letter: C
Question
Course Project Part 3—Elicitation Techniques
In Week 1, you discussed the systems requirements. In Week 2, you discussed the design plan. This week, you will continue working on the solution you have envisioned so far. The work that will be added this week will increment the information you have produced so far, complementing it in a coherent manner.
Tasks
Using the Microsoft Word document created in W2 Assignment 2, add 3–4 pages to it by completing the following tasks:
Describe the requirements of the elicitation techniques you consider should be used.
Include documentation as required by the requirements elicitation plan.
Add a list of functional and nonfunctional requirements.
Support your responses with appropriate research and examples.
Cite any sources in APA format.
Explanation / Answer
A thorough discovery of business requirements is almost never readily available at an analyst’s fingertips—rarely can requirements be quickly looked up as one would gather information for a term paper or study for a test. Much of business or technical requirements is not documented anywhere—it resides in the minds of stakeholders, in feedback that has yet to be obtained from end users, and from a study of flowcharts and surveys that have yet to be created. And so requirements must be elicited, or drawn out, and the methodology in doing so must be logical and meticulous. The importance of elicitation cannot be overstated, for it is the linchpin to any requirements project. As one scholarly article notes: “Mistakes made in elicitation have been shown many times to be major causes of systems failure or abandonment and this has a very large cost either in the complete loss or the expense of fixing mistakes.” Adequate study and preparation for elicitation can go a long way to preventing these types of errors. The purpose of requirements elicitation, therefore, is to thoroughly identify the business needs, risks, and assumptions associated with any given project.
Prepare for Elicitation
Elicitation Techniques
After securing the proper stakeholders, an analyst must determine the best techniques for eliciting requirements. Commonly used requirements elicitation methods (as identified by BABOK) include:
Conduct Elicitation
An analyst’s project’s business needs and the stakeholder mix will determine which of the above elicitation method(s) are best. Elicitation does not normally occur solely prior to requirements however; it occurs throughout a project—during discovery, modeling, and even testing. Whenever elicitation takes place during a project’s life cycle, the same principles apply to make it successful—the correct mix of stakeholders, a thorough understanding of the business need, properly selected elicitation techniques, and meticulous attention to detail.
Confirm Elicitation Results
Once the elicitation methods have been employed, an analyst must document the elicitation quickly, while it is still fresh in her mind, and share the results with appropriate stakeholders to confirm their agreement with the findings. This stage is essential to ensure that the analyst has accurately grasped, and stakeholders have accurately communicated, the project’s needs.
Elicitation serves as the underlying research to requirements creation phase. Once an analyst has sufficient material, she can begin crafting requirements.