Software Engineering - Old Questions
6. What are the different types of requirement elicitation techniques? Explain in brief.
Requirement elicitation is the process of collecting the requirements of a system or requirement gathering from user, customers and stakeholders by conducting meetings, interviews, questionnaires, brainstorming sessions, prototyping etc.
Requirement elicitation techniques are:
1. Document analysis: Document analysis is one of the most helpful elicitation techniques in understanding the current process. Documents like user manuals, software vendor manuals, process documents about the current system can provide the inputs for the new system requirements.
2. Observation: This elicitation technique helps in collecting requirements by observing users or stakeholders. This can provide information about the exiting process, inputs and outputs. There are two kinds of observations — active and passive. In active observation, the business analyst directly observes the users or stakeholders, whereas in passive observation the business analyst observes the subject matter experts.
3. Interview: An interview is a systematic approach to elicit information from a person or group of people. In this case, the business analyst acts as an interviewer. An interview provides an opportunity to explore and/or clarify requirements in more detail. Without knowing the expectations and goals of the stakeholders it is difficult to fulfil requirements.
4. Brainstorming: Brainstorming is an efficient way to define their requirements. Users can come up with very innovative ideas or requirements. This can help gather ideas and creative solutions from stakeholders in a short time. Users or stakeholders can come up with ideas that they have seen or experienced elsewhere. These ideas can be reviewed and the relevant ones can then be included in the system requirements.
5. Questionnaires: Questionnaires are useful when there is a lot of information to be gathered from a larger group of stakeholders. This enables the business team to gather requirements from stakeholders remotely. The design of the questionnaire is very important, since it can influence the answers that people provide.
6. Prototyping: Prototyping is building user interface without adding detail functionality for user to interpret the features of intended software product. It helps giving better idea of requirements. If there is no software installed at client’s end for developer’s reference and the client is not aware of its own requirements, the developer creates a prototype based on initially mentioned requirements. The prototype is shown to the client and the feedback is noted. The client feedback serves as an input for requirement gathering.