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Requirements Elicitation –
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lecture No.11
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Specific Elicitation
Techniques
• Interviews
• Scenarios
• Observations and social analysis
• Requirements reuse
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Interview
• s engineer or analyst
The requirements
discusses the system with different
stakeholders and builds up an understanding
of their requirements
• Interviews are less effective for
understanding the application domain and
the organizational issues due to terminology
and political factors
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Types of Interviews
• Closed interviews
– The requirements engineer looks for
answers to a pre-defined set of questions
• Open interviews
– There is no predefined agenda and the
requirements engineer discusses, in an
open-ended way, what stakeholders want
from the system
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Interviewing Essentials
- 1
• Interviewers must be open-minded and
should not approach the interview with
pre-conceived notions about what is
required
• Stakeholders must be given a starting
point for discussion. This can be a
question, a requirements proposal or an
existing system
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Interviewing Essentials
-2
• Interviewers must be aware of
organizational politics - many real
requirements may not be
discussed because of their
political implications
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Interview Steps
• Prepare
• Conduct
– Opening
– Body
– Closing
• Follow through
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Prepare for the Interview -
•1Before developing questions
– Define the purpose and objectives
– Determine whether the interview should be
conducted by one person or a team (define roles
for team members)
– Contact management to arrange time, place,
and outline the purpose and format
– Obtain background information
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Prepare for the Interview -
2 • the interview guide
Develop
List name and title of persons from which to
conduct the interview and date of the interview
• List questions in the order you will ask them
• Move from general to specific
• Include open questions to elicit essay type
response (e.g., Describe…, Tell me…, How…)
• Include closed questions to obtain specific
information (e.g., Who? How much?
Where?)
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Conduct the Interview -
•1
Opening
– Establish rapport and build trust and credibility
• Make eye contact
• Shake hands
• Introduce yourself (and your team); provide
information about role(s) in the interview
process
– Clarify purpose, time frame, and key
objectives
– Transition to the core of the interview by
leading into the first question
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Conduct the Interview -
•2Body
– Follow your interview guide as you
ask questions; use probes to follow up
on a response
– Be flexible and open-minded
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Conduct the Interview -
•3Body
– Listen actively
– Monitor your voice and body language
– Identify main concerns
– Maintain rapport
– Take accurate notes
– Use silence and pauses
– Ask for and obtain relevant documentation
– Ask “catch-all” question at the end
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Conduct the Interview -
•4
Closing
– Summarize findings and link to purpose
– Answer any questions they have
– Determine and agree on next steps
– Set the next meeting, if necessary
– Thank the person for his/her input
and for taking the time to meet with
you
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Follow Through - 1
• Immediately after the interview, fill in
your notes; be sure to jot down
impressions and important ideas
• Review any documentation received
from the others.
• Write an interview report, if
necessary
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Follow Through - 2
• Follow up on leads obtained during the
interview
– Contact other potential interviewees
– Research other data sources
• Follow up in agreed-upon next steps
• Send a thank you note to the
interviewee, if appropriate
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Listening
• The art of listening is most important.
You can best impress your client by
listening and giving due attention to
what the client or customer is saying
• This requires effort on part of the
interviewer
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Listening Steps
• Hear
• Interpret
• Respond
• Evaluate
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Hear the Message - 1
• Listen to learn as much as you can so
that you will know how to respond
• Give the speaker your undivided
attention; don’t just wait for your turn to
speak
• Concentrate on the message, not the
person
• Don’t interrupt
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Hear the Message - 2
• Tune out distractions such as interfering
noises, wandering thoughts, and
emotional reactions to the speaker’s
message
• Suspend judgment about the message
until you have heard all the facts
• Take notes on the speaker’s key points, if
appropriate
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Hear the Message - 3
• Learn to manage your own emotional
filters which can keep you from
hearing what is really being said
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Explain the Message - 1
• Observe the speaker’s nonverbal cues
(gestures, facial expressions, and tone
of voice) and factor them into your
interpretation
• Listen for the attitudes and motives
behind the words
• Listen for the speaker’s needs and wants
Nonverbal Response to 22
the Message
• Make eye contact
• Use facial expressions and gestures to
indicate that you are listening
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Verbal Response to the Message
• Ask questions to get more specific
information and ensure
understanding
• Rephrase the message using different
words to check the meaning
• Make empathetic remarks that acknowledge
you understand the speaker’s feelings,
without offering opinions or judging him or
her
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Evaluate the Message -
1
• Identify the main point of the message
and its supporting evidence
• Clarify facts, perceptions, and
opinions
• Distinguish between fact and opinion
• Group facts in like categories and
logical order (importance,
arrangements)
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Brainstorming
• Facilitated application specification
technique (FAST)
• Group activity
• All members are equal
• Off-site meeting location is
preferred
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Scenarios - 1
• Scenarios are stories which explain how a
system might be used. They should
include – A description of the system state
before
entering the scenario
– The normal flow of events in the scenario
– Exceptions to the normal flow of events
– Information about concurrent activities
– A description of the system state at the end
of the scenario
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Scenarios and Use-
Cases
• The term use-case (i.e., a specific case
of system usage) is sometimes used to
refer to a scenario
– A use-case is a scenario
– A scenario is a collection of use-cases.
Therefore, each exceptional interaction
is represented as a separate use-case
– A use-case is a collection of scenarios
Observation and Social 28
Analysis 1
• People often find it hard to describe what
they do because it is so natural to them.
Sometimes, the best way to understand it
is to observe them at work
Observation and Social 29
Analysis- 2
• Actual work processes often differ
from formal, prescribed processes
• An ethnographer spends an extended
time observing people at work and
building up a picture of how work is
done
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Ethnography Guidelines -
1
• Assume that people are good at doing
their job and look for non-standard ways
of working
• Spend time getting to know the people
and establish a trust relationship
• Keep detailed notes of all work practices.
Analyze them and draw conclusions
from them
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Ethnography Guidelines -
•2Combine observation with open-ended
interviewing
• Organize regular de-briefing session
where the ethnographer talks with
people outside the process
• Combine ethnography with other
elicitation techniques
Requirements Reuse 32
• Reuse involves taking the requirements
which have been developed for one
system and using them in a different
system
• Requirements reuse saves time and
effort as reused requirements have
already been analyzed and validated
in other systems
• Currently, requirements reuse is an
informal process but more systematic
reuse could lead to larger cost
savings
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Reuse Possibilities
• Where the requirement is concerned with
providing application domain information
• Where the requirement is concerned with
the style of information presentation.
Reuse leads to a consistency of style across
applications
• Where the requirement reflects company
policies such as security policies
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Prototyping
• A prototype is an initial version of a system
which may be used for experimentation
• Prototypes are valuable for requirements
elicitation because users can experiment with the
system and point out its strengths and weaknesses.
They have something concrete to criticize
• We’ll talk about prototyping in a later lecture
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Summary
There are various techniques of requirements
elicitation which may be used including
interviewing, scenarios, prototyping and
participant observation
We focused on different aspects of
conducting interviews in this lecture
