Elicit and Analyze
Requirements
Eliciting the requirements
requires getting questions answered. An interview questionnaire is an
effective way to accomplish this task. Once the raw information from
the customer is available, accurate and precise requirements must then
be distilled out of that raw information. This will require using a
system model to abstract the behavior of the desired system so that
customer consensus can be obtained. All of this work will culminate in
the creation of a vision document.
Interviewing the customers is a critical activity. If the correct
questions are not asked, then the correct answers are
unreachable. Getting agreement from the interviewee that the
interviewer
recorded their response correctly is essential. Interpreting responses,
rewording responses, or spinning responses are all steps along the
pathway of doom for a software project. Seeking clarification
from the interviewee is correct and expected. Attempting to
modify interviewee responses without their involvment is very risky.
Ensure that the system model is abstract and easy to understand so that
representatives of the cutomer organization (who are domain experts in
their business domain and not necessariy software engineeering) can
correctly understand what the model is describing.
The culmination of elicitation and analysis activities is the creation
of the project Vision Document. The Vision Document captures the
results of all of these activities and therefore it is a very important
artifact. There should be consensus between the developing
organization and the customer organization regarding the contents of
the Vision Document before proceeding to the next stages of the
software development process.
No part of this work should be produced or used without the permission of the authors: Michael Turner and Dr. Sharon A White.