Interview Questions : Requirement Gathering Analysis Technique

Requirements Gathering Techniques
There are many techniques available for gathering the requirements. Each technique has value in certain scenario. Most of the time, ,brit becomes necessary for Business Analyst to use multiple techniques to gather complete and correct requirements from clients and stakeholders.
BABOK V2 defines an interview as a systematic approach for eliciting information from a person (or a group of people) in an informal or formal setting by asking questions and documenting the responses.
Though commonly used, interviews are not ideal for every situation. For example, where the objective is to get the opinions of a group of people, workshops or brainstorming sessions are more appropriate. The main challenge of using the interview technique usually lies in organising and conducting the interview session effectively. Good human relation skills are needed to ensure that the analyst can deal with different kinds of people.

A typical conversational method is interviews. It is most commonly used method in requirements elicitation. An Interview is generally conducted by an experienced analyst, who has some generic knowledge about the application domain as well. In an interview, Analyst discusses the desired product with different stakeholders and develops an understanding of their requirements. Generally Interviews are divided in two groups.
Closed Interview:
In this interview the requirements, we have to prepare some predefined questions and try to get the answers for these questions for the stakholder.
Open-ended Interview:
In this interview, we do not need to prepare any predefined questions, and the information from the stakeholders in open discussions.

There are different ways of conducting interviews;

One-on-One Interviews:
One-on-one interviews are the most common technique for gathering requirements, as well as one of the primary sources of requirements.
To help get the most out of an interview, they should be well thought out and prepared before sitting with the interviewee.
The analyst should identify stakeholders to be interviewed.
These can be users who interact with the current or new system, management, project financers or anyone else that would be involved in the system.
When preparing an interview is it important to ask open-ended questions, as well as closed-ended questions.
Open-ended questions generally help in obtaining valuable information, based on various individuals and the way the different way they interact with, or view, the system. These types of questions require the interviewee to explain or describe their thoughts, and cannot be simply answered with a “yes” or “no”. Asking the interviewee what they like about the current system or how they use it would be examples of open-ended questions. These types of questions can provide the consultant to further probe for more detail with follow up questions, in order to get more details. An example open-ended question would be “What are some of the problems you face on a daily basis?”
Close-ended questions can also be useful, when the interviewer is looking for a specific answer. They can provide specific answers for the interviewee to choose from, in formats including true or false or multiple choice. Although close-ended questions do not provide as much detail as open-ended, they can be useful to cover more topics in a less amount of time. An example of a close-ended question would be “How many telephone orders are received per day?”

Once the questions have been established, it is a good practice to provide the questions to the interviewee prior to the interview, in the event that the interviewee needs to prepare. During the interview, the interviewer should obtain permission from the interviewee that recorders may be used, to ensure that if details are missed while taking notes can easily be retrieved. At the end of the interview, the results should be provided to the interviewee, for confirmation of their responses.

Some Tips for this technique:

• Try to avoid Yes or No type of questions because it’s very difficult to understand the user’s or client’s problem with such answers. Always ask to explain with the example, could you please explain your daily work in your module?
• Drill down to detail or pull up to higher level questions
• Talk to the right stakeholders to get the right outcome.

Group Interviews:
Group interviews are similar to one-on-one interview, except there is more than one person being interviewed.
Group interviews work well when the interviewees are at the same level or position.
A group interview also has an advantage when there is a time constraint.
More thoughts and discussion can be generated, as someone in the group may state or suggest an idea that may have been overlooked by others, which in turn can lead to a discussion or provide more information on a particular issue.
The interviewer can gauge which issues are more generally agreed upon, and which are which issues differ.
A major disadvantage can be scheduling the interview. When more than one person are involved, it may be difficult, or become time consuming, in establishing date and time that works well for all parties.

Facilitated sessions:
You can call it Group Interview ++ because here you invite a group usually more than 6 people for a common purpose. In this case, you are trying to gather a set of common requirements from the group in a faster manner than if you were to interview each of them separately. You need to prepare questions well in advance and get familiar with participant’s role and responsibilities.

Joint application development (JAD):
JAD sessions are similar to commonly facilitated sessions. However, the group typically stays in the session until the session objectives are completed. For a requirements JAD session, the participants stay in session until a complete set of requirements is documented and agreed to.

So, why opt for an interview above other techniques?

• Interviews offer the analyst an opportunity to establish rapport and trust with the interviewee. By conducting a face-to-face meeting, the analyst can start a cordial relationship with the interviewee to make them feel involved in the project.
• Interviews allow the interviewee to respond freely and openly to questions, especially when the location is private.
• Interviews provide an opportunity for the analyst to ask follow-up questions or re-word the question to get instant feedback from the interviewee.
• Interviews present an opportunity for the analyst to observe non-verbal clues. It is not everything that an interviewee can put into words.

In preparing for an interview, you should keep the points below in mind –

• First aim to get the basic facts about the stakeholder and his or her organization (whether that’s just one department or the entire company).
• Ask one or two colleagues to review the interview questions you’re planning to ask.
• By all means use this article as a starting point for developing a customized script to use during the interview, but remember that it’s not important to slavishly follow that script.
• To keep your interview script from becoming a hindrance rather than a help, remember that the goal is to get thorough and consistent input for the design of the system.
• Plan for follow-up questions and don’t be afraid to ask them if they occur to you during the interview.
• Design the interview form in a way that makes it easy for you to write down the answers or enter them into a computer, or use recording equipment.
• Remember that these techniques help you focus on the content of the discussion and not the act of documenting it.

Guidelines for Requirement Gathering:

1. Pick the Interview Groups wisely. Business Analyst should consider various factors while group selections: Technical Maturity, Business Process Knowledge, Specialisation, Interest, Departments, Organization sections, and Time Availability.
2. Before starting the Requirement Gathering, it’s good to summarize the project and associated purpose, to avoid misconceptions of teams involved in this phase.
3. Business Analyst should follow up each question with a set of clarifying questions to dig it further.
4. Always take collaborative approach while gathering the requirements.
5. Keep the questionnaire descriptive and simple to understand.
6. Initially, ask the Vendors for the list of requirements with associated details. This will help Business Analyst to frame questions.
7. Carry out the Polls, so that users rank their needs, and have a place to provide feedback

Note: Feel free to comment your feedback and your suggestions, Thank you.
© Naitik Gajjar