CONFIRMING ELICITATION RESULTS

Hello everyone, lets understand what “Confirming Elicitation Results”

But before that we need to know what are the process involved for doing that and when it has to be done.

When we split the phrase “confirm elicitation results” it leaves us 3 things to look into.“Confirm”, “Elicitation”, “Results”. Before we “confirm” we have “to elicit” and “document the result”. Hence we have to elicit followed by Document and then we confirm it with the necessary people. The above mentioned steps are all done by BA (Business Analyst).

Elicitation is the process of understanding the requirements of the project. Once elicitation is completed, it should be documented with the predefined template within your company. After the elicitation results are documented, it is time to confirm, which uses the phrase “Confirm Elicitation results”

The Reason for confirming the elicitation results is to make sure we are progressing on the right direction. BA has to send the documentation done during elicitation and get the confirmation from the stakeholders before starting the project.

If the Stakeholder confirms it then we can proceed to the next level of design and development. But if the Stakeholder things it is not correct, then BA has to schedule another round of Elicitation to gather the requirements and follow the same process.

So the advantages of confirming elicitation results is to save time, effort and cost associated with the project. Let’s consider that the elicitation results documented are not confirmed with the stakeholder and the process has started in an agile/waterfall environment. If it is waterfall, the client will look at the output only at the end of the whole project and if the requirements of the client don’t match with the output then, the effort by the technical team, time taken and cost associated is a waste and we have to restart the process again.

If it is agile environment, the level of damage is less, but the same will happen when the first module is completed.

The best ways of confirming are as follows.

• Confirm with the existing document : We can compare the elicitation document with the business case document which is signed at the start of the project. It will give the desired results as the business case document is confirmed by the stake holders before the start of the project.
• Interviews : The BA can send the document and have a scheduled discussion with the stakeholder to understand his inputs and decide whether we require changes in the elicitation made and check with the Internal team to make the changes accordingly.
• Group Discussion : BA can organise a meeting with internal team and stakeholders and sort the queries at the discussion itself which we save more time when compared to the previous way as the tech team will also be present in the meeting and they will give their feedback on the same.

The below representation will help it more easy to understand.

I hope the above gives a brief idea of what confirming elicitation results are.