In the world of technology, we have been arguing about the term "requirements" since the dawn of the computer age. Every business analyst, project manager, and software developer has their own view of requirements. Some of us love them, some of us hate them. Some of...
Category: Requirements Gathering (aka Elicitation)
Articles, How-To Videos, and Course Previews
Requirements gathering is all about eliciting, trawling, discovering, extracting, drawing out – or whatever you call it – requirements from domain experts, managers, and stakeholders by any other title. This category includes articles, videos, KnowledgeKnuggets™, and books on tools, techniques, and tips for getting the requirements, user stories, features, functions, and non-functional requirements defined.
Plan Techniques, Tools, and Templates for Workshops or Collaborative Meetings
Dec 3, 2021
The right set of tools and techniques can go a long way toward facilitating collaborative conversations.
Motivational Interviewing Can Supercharge Stakeholder Contributions
Jan 10, 2020
Buy at Zazzle As avid readers of my blog probably noticed, I appear to have recently become semi-obsessed with the problem of getting the most out of your stakeholders when eliciting requirements – or user stories, features, scenarios, examples, or anything else you...
Motivating Stakeholders to Show Up and Contribute
Dec 6, 2019
Do You Struggle Getting Stakeholders to Attend Requirements Workshops and Meetings? I ran across a fascinating book titled “7 Secrets of Persuasion: Leading-Edge Neuromarketing Techniques to Influence Anyone” by James C. Crimmins, PhD. The book is a spell-binding...
Why to NOT Ask WHY: Improving Business Requirements
Dec 3, 2019
Asking WHY Can Lead to the Wrong Answer As Business Analysts, we need to know WHY people do what they do to figure out opportunities for improvement. It turns out that asking WHY is a lousy way to find out. If we ask “WHY”, we will get an answer, but there is a good...
Using Cynefin to Prioritize and Analyze Features, User Stories, and Functional Requirements
Nov 16, 2018
Lecture 5 of “Getting and Writing IT Requirements in a Lean and Agile World”
Why Do You Need Better Requirements?
Nov 16, 2018
Lecture 2 of “Writing Requirements for IT — Use Four Simple Rules to Improve the Quality of Your IT Requirements”
What Exactly Is Requirements Elicitation?
Nov 16, 2018
Lecture 2 of “How to Run Requirements Meetings and Facilitated Workshops – How to Effectively Communicate with Stakeholders to Discover User Stories, Features, and Non-functional Requirements”
Problem Analysis Uncovers Business Requirements (2)
Nov 15, 2018
How to Craft Business Problem Statements That Enable Decision-makers To Approve Your Project and Ignite Your Team’s Creativity
Business Problems Drive Business Requirements (1)
Nov 15, 2018
Effective Information Technology Solutions Start with Business Problem Analysis, for Which You Need a List of Potential Problems
Use a Question File to Reduce Uncertainty during Requirements Elicitation
Nov 15, 2018
Keep Your Agile Analysis on Track by Managing Questions, Answers, and Assumptions in a Central Repository
How to Identify Stakeholders for IT Projects
Nov 15, 2018
Identifying All Stakeholders at the Beginning of Your Project Is a Best Practice for Reducing Scope Creep and Avoiding Missing Requirements
How to Run Requirements Workshops (aka JAD/R)
Nov 15, 2018
Requirements Discovery or User Story Workshops Are a Fast-track Approach To Getting User Requirements from a Diverse Group of Stakeholders
Requirements Gathering Workshops for Widely Distributed Teams
Mar 27, 2013
Requirements Gathering Workshops Go Virtual - For Real Defining business and stakeholder requirements is tough enough; adding the difficulty of having to deal with different locations and time zones can drive you up the wall. You might have tried web or virtual...
Are Business Problems or Opportunities Driving Requirements?
Nov 6, 2012
Organizations initiate IT projects either to solve business problems or to seize business opportunities. Recognizing the difference is the challenge.
Requirements Gathering Interviewing Techniques for Business Analysts
Nov 1, 2012
Maintaining a list of the questions you need answered is a simple but effective interviewing tool for business analysts.
A Basic Business Problem Analysis Technique
Jul 30, 2012
How does your organization decide which projects to fund? When a project is done, how do you know if it was successful? Business problem analysis is a set of techniques that identify and evaluate areas in which stakeholders are unhappy with an existing situation....
Conduct Requirements Interviews to Discover Stakeholder Needs
Jul 26, 2012
Business analysis at all levels requires interviewing skills. This post discusses seven key characteristics that will help you improve your interviewing skills.