This is the fourth post in the Beachcamp series, discussing requirements elicitation. It includes a visual map of the requirements elicitation section.

Beachcamp: Day 4

Requirements Elicitation focuses on the business analyst’s interaction with stakeholders and facilitation of their engagement in the articulation of requirements.

It also aims to document the findings to support enterprise analysis, planning and monitoring, requirements analysis, management and communication.

Informal and formal meetings, workshops or even just short catch-ups are in play to get more information about the business need, the limitations of the existing processes and the information systems that support them.

Beachcamp day 4

The preparation for any of these types of interactions with the project stakeholders is important and should not be taken lightly. A clear agenda, meeting rules, expected actions, outcomes and decisions – everything should be well thought out and arranged to avoid wasting the time allocated for the meeting.

From a practical viewpoint, some time should be allocated within these elicitation workshops to discuss how the organisation will interact with its wider environment in the “to be” state. Quite often this topic is left until the point where a design is almost complete.

A certain amount of requirements analysis takes place during elicitation activities. It’s necessary to separate personal wishes of the stakeholders from actual business requirements. Rough prioritisation helps draw a line between wishes and actual needs.

The business analyst records the gathered information in a structured way to facilitate its further processing, simplify confirmation and use for developing the business requirements.

Click on the image below to download the visual map:


Download PDF