Question

Investigate the library, the Internet, and your course materials for information about different requirements elicitation methods. Write 400‒600 words to address the following:

Based on your research, provide a recommendation of 3 different elicitation methods.

Provide a brief description of each method.

Identify the benefits of these methods as well as any disadvantages they may have.

List at least 3 common problems encountered by teams when eliciting and analyzing requirements.

Cite all references using APA format.

Answer 1

There are a number of requirements elicitation methods. Few of them are listed below –

Interviews

Brainstorming Sessions

Facilitated Application Specification Technique (FAST)

Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

Use Case Approach

The success of an elicitation technique used depends on the maturity of the analyst, developers, users and the customer involved.

1. Interviews:

Objective of conducting an interview is to understand the customer’s expectations from the software.

It is impossible to interview every stakeholder hence representatives from groups are selected based on their expertise and credibility.

Interviews maybe be open ended or structured.

In open ended interviews there is no pre-set agenda. Context free questions may be asked to understand the problem.

In structured interview, agenda of fairly open questions is prepared. Sometimes a proper questionnaire is designed for the interview.

2. Brainstorming Sessions:

It is a group technique

It is intended to generate lots of new ideas hence providing a platform to share views

A highly trained facilitator is required to handle group bias and group conflicts.

Every idea is documented so that everyone can see it.

Finally a document is prepared which consists of the list of requirements and their priority if possible.

3. Facilitated Application Specification Technique:

It’s objective is to bridge the expectation gap – difference between what the developers think they are supposed to build and what customers think they are going to get.

A team oriented approach is developed for requirements gathering.