Requirements Elicitation using a workshop

By Katlego Raboshakga

Analysts have a number of techniques at their disposal to enable them to perform requirements elicitation. These techniques can be used concurrently to get a comprehensive set of requirements. One of the common elicitation techniques often used is the requirements elicitation workshop.

According to Schalken, Brinkkemper and Van Vliet, “Facilitated workshops are intensive meetings in which technical staff, end-users and management collaborate on information systems development tasks such as project planning, requirements specification and user interface design. It is clear from this definition that requirements workshops entail a lot more than just eliciting requirements. Workshops focus on the system development project in its entirety and involve stakeholders from different backgrounds. This team of stakeholders often consists of the project sponsor, subject matter experts, representative users, the scribe and observers.

Requirements elicitation workshops should be led by an unbiased and experienced facilitator, with exceptional facilitation and communication skills. The role of the facilitator is to manage the meeting and keep the team on track as well as facilitate a process of decision and consensus making amongst other things. The facilitator has to do extensive planning of two to five days prior to the workshop to ensure that it achieves its objectives.

Some of the benefits of requirements workshops as stated by Young are that it is a “dynamic, interactive and cooperative process and it involves users and cuts across the organizational boundaries”. Contentious issues can be resolved quickly and when properly run they manage user’s attitude towards change as well as user expectations. Workshops also create a suitable environment for applying other elicitation techniques such as prototyping, requirements gathering with use cases and role playing.

The success of a requirements workshop depends on a few critical factors such as executive commitment, reasonable scope, participant commitment and preparation and equal participation. If correctly executed a requirements elicitation workshop will contribute immensely to the requirements definition and management process and to the ultimate success of the system development project.

References

Schalken J., Brinkkemper S., And Van Vliet H., Assessing the Effect of Facilitated Workshops in Requirements Engineering, Available from http://www.cs.vu.nl/~joost/publications/2004AssessingtheEffectsofFacilitatedWorkshopsinRequirementsEngineering.pdf, (Accessed 9 September 2009)

International Institute of Business Analysis, A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK Guide), Version 2.0

Young R., Recommended Requirements Gathering Practices, Available from http://www.clearspecs.com/downloads/ClearSpecs58V01_Recommended%20Reqts%20Gathering%20Practices_Young.pdf, (Accessed 10 September 2009)