Elicitation Techniques (Workshop and Questionnaire)

As a BA the first responsibility is to gather the requirements from the clients. So, let’s talk about the Requirement Elicitation.
Requirement Elicitation: It is all about obtaining information form the stakeholders by communicated with them for understanding their requirements. So, the requirement gathering could be done directly or by doing some experiments, research etc. It should be planned, unplanned or both.
• Planned: It includes various types such as experiments, workshop, etc.
• Unplanned: it includes various types such as observation where one can visit directly to client site and observe their day schedule and discuss the requirements on site.
The 3 tasks that need to be include in Elicitation techniques:
Elicitation Preparation; Elicitation Conduct; Elicitation Results.
There are various Elicitation techniques used by BA:
• Stakeholder’s Analysis
• Brainstorming
• Interview
• Document Analysis
• Focus Groups
• Observations
• Prototyping
• Survey
• Joint Application Development (JAD)

Workshop: In this technique BA’s generally organized the structured meetings with selected stakeholders to define, create, refine, clarify and complete the requirements.
There are certain advantages and disadvantages of this techniques as discussed below:
Advantages:
• It is one of the easiest way to collect the data on a large scale from the clients.
• We can get almost accurate information from the clients in a short period of time.
• We get the requirement confirmation at the same time as all the stakeholders were present associated with the projects.
Disadvantages:
• Sometimes the success rate is less as it depends upon the expertise level of the facilitator who is conducting the session.
• There is ambiguity arises when there are too many participants as we might get diffract from the motive of the meeting.
Survey/Questionnaire: In this method, generally the set of questions which should be based on risks and should be direct or ambiguous were asked to the stakeholders in order to identify the area of interest of the clients. The questions should be open ended or closed ended:
• Open Ended questions: In this we give the full freedom to clients for providing the answer of the questions asked in their own words.
• Close Ended Questions: in this we set the definite boundary or options for the clients to choose among the various suitable options provided against the asked questions that suits best according to them. Examples: MCQ, etc.
There are certain advantages and disadvantages of this techniques as discussed below:
Advantages:
• It is one of the easiest way to collect the data on a large scale from the clients.
• We can get almost accurate information from the clients in a short period of time.
Disadvantages:
• Sometimes all the stakeholders should not be available at the same place to participate in the survey.
• There is ambiguity arises when the questions are not clear to the participants.
Example: The questionnaire for transferring from old POS to a new POS of big retailers/malls as follows:
• Can you briefly explain about your existing business and payment system?
• What challenge or problem do you face in your current business and payment system?
• How do you measure these challenges? (Expenses, revenue, time, leads, clicks, etc.)
• What were you using before you found us?
• What did you like about the previous product/services?
• What caused you to leave? Is there anything you miss about the previous product/service(s)?
• What would you like to see changed?
• Which features do you love to have in the POS system?
• Do you want the information you need most to be automatically emailed to you each week so you can spot trends and opportunities to be ahead of competitors?
• Do you need to have an add-on feature to order directly from the POS based on inventory alerts and reports? Do you need to access the system remotely?
• Do you need to integrate fitting room technology like traffic counting software?
• Do I have the ability to enter the cost of goods (COGS) to see my margins by category and brand? If so, are there levels of access to that information?
• Do you need a transition team from old POS system to new one (Fee is charged), and do you want to import your previous database? (Fee is charged).
• Do you want the POS will likely be cloud-based, and have failsafe backups so if it goes offline, you can still make sales?
• Do you need to prefer an integrated loyalty rewards program between purchase, rewards, and CRM?
• Can I query sales by brand and category to create personalized mailings and emails?
• Do you need to integrate with your online store seamlessly to give a total view of your inventory?
• When products are entered in the POS, do you want to automatically update your website with in-stock totals?
• Do you need to have a time clock integral for giving bonus to employee for amount of goods sold/week?
• Do you want the POS system sync to your existing bookkeeping software?