REQUIREMENTS GATHERING - A Developer's Guide to Data Modeling for SQL Server - page 100

conduct multiple rounds of interviews to cover as much of the business as
possible.

Sample Questions and Forms
Every project varies in size, scope, requirements, and deliverables. For
small or medium-size projects, there may be four or five business users to
interview. In some situations, however, you may have an application that
has numerous facets or numerous phases, or you may need to design vari-
ous data models to support related applications. In this situation, there may
be dozens of people to interview, so it may be more efficient to draft a se-
ries of questionnaires that can help you gather a large portion of the data
you'll need. You can then sort the responses, looking for individuals whom
you may need to schedule in-person interviews with, to seek clarification
or to determine whether there is more information to be shared.
Whether you use a questionnaire or conduct good old-fashioned in-
person interviews, you'll need to build a list of questions to work from. To
get an idea of the type of questions that should be asked, look at Table 5.1.

Table 5.1 Sample Questions for Requirements Gathering
Interviews and Questionnaires

Question Purpose Candidate Type

What is your job role? Identify the perspective of the All

candidate.

How many orders do you process Gain an idea of the workload. Data entry personnel

daily/weekly/monthly?
How do customers place orders?

Understand how data is input Customer service personnel

into the system.

What information do you need Understand any information users Fulfillment employees

that the current system does not are missing or may be gathering

provide? outside the existing process.

What works well in the current Gain insight into work-flow Employees, managers

system? What could be improved? enhancements.

Please explain your data entry Understand the existing process. Employees

process.
How do you distribute the

Understand ancillary data needs. Managers

workload?

Notice that these questions tend to fall into one of two categories:
open-ended questions and closed-ended questions. Open-ended ques-