Elicitation and Gathering of Requirements - Requirements Engineering and Management for Software Development Projects - page 38

a. Be on time so that the executive would not be kept waiting.
b. Ask questions in the gentlest manner possible and listen attentively and
carefully so that the need for repetition is minimized
c. Make notes as you listen and understand the explanation. If you are
recording the interview, inform the interviewee of the fact as some people
may object to being taped. The issue with audio recording is that we cannot
quickly check if we have all the information at the end of the interview. To
do so, you need to playback the entire interview! So, as you record the
interview, be careful to capture all the required information.
d. Draw rough flow charts to clarify your understanding of the process steps
and get them confirmed by the interviewee.
e. Never dispute or pick an argument with the person. If you get the feeling
that the person is not right, you can get it clarified from his superior or with
the same person in a second round. But if you get into an argument, the
interview goes astray.
f. When in doubt, describe your understanding and ask the individual to
confirm your understanding rather than ask the person to repeat.
g. In some cases, it becomes necessary to have another round of discussion,
fix up the next appointment before you conclude.
h. Do not forget to collect the forms used by the individual. These help you to
understand the person's inputs and outputs.
i. When you collect the forms or note down the data items, ask for the type of
data and its maximum length. Non-software personnel are apt to give the
average length, but it is necessary to provide for the maximum length in the
database.
j. When you have to terminate an interview before capturing information
about all the processes performed by the individual, terminate after capture
of complete information about a process. Terminating midway for a process
tends to repeat information capture for the process all over again.
7. Capture information—While conducting the interview, the information pro-
vided by the individual may be captured using the template provided in
Table 3.1 . Capturing information while the interview is in progress, may force
you to hurry in noting down the details. Unless one is adept in speed writing, it
would be difficult to capture the information provided by the interviewee by
hand. It may be a good idea to use a tape recorder of some kind or use a laptop's
sound recording facility to capture the voice of the interview so that it can be
replayed later, to capture information into the template.
8. Check for completeness of information using organizational checklists
9. Sift the information collected into requirements, information for filling in the
identified gaps and data useful for software design such as workflows.