Elicitation and Gathering of Requirements - Requirements Engineering and Management for Software Development Projects - page 52

persuade the users to accept the features in the product than to customize the
product. How to manage the constraints of time and budget is a case for project
management but not for the requirements capturing. This pitfall can be over-
come by distinguishing the requirements capturing from project management
considerations.
4. Not preparing well when beginning the personal interviews—Personal inter-
views remain one of the major source of requirements elicitation especially in
the project development scenario and is perhaps the only scenario in agile
projects. But if we need to elicit information from human beings, preparation is
necessary. The users are not well versed in the information requirements of the
software developers. Usually, the end users start by narrating the work they do
and their concerns and issues. Unless they are carefully and tactfully guided the
required information may not be forthcoming from them as they do not know
what to give out. So it behooves on the Business Analyst to prepare well before
interviewing a person to capture requirements and be ready with right questions
to elicit appropriate responses. Asking a wrong question would elicit a wrong
and inappropriate response and derails the interview itself. A Business Analyst
also has to prepare to ascertain if the user is providing right information or not.
If not, the requirements would all be wrong. Business Analysts or whosoever is
entrusted with the job of capturing project requirements ought to be trained in
the art of interviewing and evoking right response. This sort of training in the
industry is rather an exception than a rule. Not preparing adequately before
conducting personal interviews is a common pitfall in the elicitation and
gathering of project requirements.
5. Prejudices—Both the users and analysts often come with prejudices towards
each other's function. Users sometimes show reluctance to part with critical
information for the fear of losing their unique indispensability. Analysts
sometimes feel that the users do not easily divulge information and it has to be
extricated. Sometimes, these are factual and sometimes imaginary. It is
essential to instill confidence in users that the proposed computer-based solu-
tion is to assist them than to supplant them. This would encourage the users to
readily share all the information. It is necessary to train the analysts in the art of
conducting personal interviews. That way, this pitfall can be overcome.
6. Omitting the capture of vital process steps and data items in their completeness.
Process steps such as validation steps are oft forgotten. The average size of data
items is captured instead of maximum size of the data items. Data precision for
numeric data items is also oft forgotten. The onus is on the analyst to prod the
information sources and obtain complete information. More iterations would be
required to obtain complete information if we forget some vital aspects.