The goal of the requirements process is the generation of a prioritized list of business and stakeholder needs that a software solution must meet. Getting end users and other stakeholders to communicate their needs is a challenging task. Users can have difficulty reflecting on their software requirements and communicating them. As a result, IT must use specialized techniques to elicit requirements in ways that avoid the inherent limitations of end-user and stakeholder self-reports. To learn more about the specific elicitation techniques, refer to the Info-Tech Advisor research note “Elicitation Techniques Bring Requirements to the Surface.”

Evaluating Elicitation Techniques for Smarter Choices

Elicitation techniques have different strengths and weaknesses. To account for these differences, a strong requirements elicitation process should use more than one technique. Choosing the right technique requires an understanding of the audience and the virtues/vices of each method. To aid IT managers in choosing elicitation techniques, Table 1 provides a slightly modified summary (with some additions) of the International Institute for Business Analysis (IIBA) evaluation of the standard elicitation methods.