Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
3.2.1 Personal Interviews
Personal interviews are perhaps most extensively used especially in the case of
project software development.
When software is developed in-house, the Business Analysts from the IS
department meet the end users to collect requirements using personal interviews.
Personal interviews are the primary means of capturing project requirements in the
case of in-house software development projects.
When software development is outsourced, the vendor receives a set of top
level rudimentary requirements which need to be developed further so that soft-
ware design can begin. The development team studies the preliminary require-
ments and identifies gaps-gaps between what is provided in the preliminary
requirements and the granularity needed for commencing the software design. It is
sometimes possible to bridge the gaps using other methods like emails and phone
calls when the identified gaps are minimal or are of simple nature. But when the
gaps are significantly many, or are of complex nature (that is, the development
team is not able to understand fully the implications of the preliminary require-
ments received), personal interviews become necessary. Unless proper care is
taken, it is easy to waste time and effort on eliciting information using personal
interviews. The following steps would aid in the collection of right information
using personal interviews:
1. Planning of personal interviews—Planning involves identifying the resources
required to achieve the objective. In this case, it is the concerned executives
who can provide necessary information, time and effort required to collect the
information as well as logistics necessary to conduct the interviews and to sift
the information collected. We begin by making a list of individuals that can
provide relevant and useful information. We then estimate the clock hours
needed to elicit information from each of those executives. We also estimate
the time and effort required from us to prepare for conducting the interview and
the type of persons that can conduct the interview and elicit the requirements.
2. Study the preliminary information and relevant subject literature to
understand the domain at hand—If we are already knowledgeable in the
domain at hand, we may perhaps skip this step. Otherwise, it pays to study the
preliminary information provided by the client and identify the gaps. If there is
no preliminary information from the client, we may study the literature avail-
able on the subject and this study could include running demos of similar
products developed earlier in our organization or demos available on the
Internet. This will help us in becoming familiar with the jargon of the inter-
viewee and aid in quick understanding of the responses received in the inter-
view. This is a very important step in eliciting requirements using personal
interview technique. Failures in eliciting requirements using personal inter-
views mainly stem from skipping this step or performing this step in a very
cursory manner. A well prepared interviewer can obtain all the information in
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