Requirements Gathering

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Requirements Gathering
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Contemplative Questions

• What techniques are available for gathering
  information about requirements?
• Which technique is best? When is each
  appropriate to use?
• What are the problems of bias? From where can
  bias come?

3
Issues

• What are all the sources of information
  available?
• What is the goal? What is the end result of
  gathering information about requirements?

4
Sources

• Users
• Reports
• Forms
• Procedures
• Is it better to utilize more than one of the
  above?
• How do we define better?
• What is the inherent tradeoff here?

5
What characteristics should analysts possess?

• Impertinence
• Question everything
• Impartiality
• Find the best organizational solution
• Relaxation of constraints
• Attention to detail
• Reframing
• View the organization in new ways
• Are these attributes important? Why or why not?
  
• What do analysts really do?

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Deliverables

• Information collected from users
• Existing documents and files
• Computer-based information
• Understanding of organizational components
• Business objective
• Information needs
• Rules of data processing
• Key events
• In and of themselves, these deliverables are not
  important. What do they become? What is the
  bigger picture here?

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Techniques

• Interviews
• Questionnaires
• Observation
• Document / Procedure Analysis
• JAD
• Prototyping

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Exercise

• Rate each of the previous techniques based on
  these criteria (high, medium or low)
• Degree of participation with user
• Information "richness" (depth)
• Breadth of information (scope)
• Cost (Analysts' Time)
• Cost (Users Time)
• Ability to integrate information
• User involvement w/ system design

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Interviews -- Five Basic Steps

• Selecting Interviewees
• Designing the Interview Guide
• Preparing for the Interview
• Conducting the Interview
• Post-Interview Follow-up
• Each of these steps is ripe with opportunities
  for injecting bias.
• Is bias a bad thing? Why or why not?
• Which step takes the longest?

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Interviews

• Selecting Interviewees
• Same guidelines as questionnaires
• Should be representative of all users
• Recall the effects of bias
• Types of samples
• Convenient
• Random sample
• Purposeful sample
• Stratified sample

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Interviews

• Designing the Interview Guide

Sample Interview Guide Figure 7-2 For whose
benefit are interview guides? Is it worthwhile
to construct them? What are the benefits? What
about bias?
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Interviews

• Designing the Interview Guide
• Overall Questioning Strategies
• General area, narrowing to specific topic
  (preferred)
• Tell me about CTI site, then Courses, then Course
  Information, then enrollment numbers
• Specific topic, moving to General
• Enrollment numbers on Course Info page to CTI
  site in general
• Types of Interview Questions
• Open-Ended
• No pre-specified answers
• Close-Ended
• Respondent is asked to choose from a set of
  specified responses

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Interviews

• Preparing for the Interview
• Confirm place/time
• Review areas to be covered
• Encourage interviewee to bring reference materials

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Interviews

• Conducting the Interview
• Gather facts, opinions and speculations
• Avoid bias when phrasing questions, e.g. phrasing
  in ways that imply a wrong or right answer
• Never take sides on an issue
• Tape record with individual and organizational
  permission

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Interviews

• Conducting the Interview
• Assume tape recording will not work, which means
  you must simultaneously
• Follow the interview guide, and
• Listen very carefully to what is being said, and
• Observe body language and emotions, and
• Separate facts from opinions, and
• Take notes, and
• Plan the next question/flow of the interview
• THIS IS VERY DIFFICULT TO DO CORRECTLY AND MUST
  BE PRACTICED.

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Interviews

• Conducting the Interview--practical tips
• Dont worry, be happy
• Pay attention
• Summarize key points
• Be succinct and honest
• Give interviewee time to ask questions
• Be sure to thank the interviewee
• End on time
• And, dont ask unnecessary questions!

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Interviews

• Post Interview
• Consider asking for more time if necessary
• Confirm major points identified with interviewee
• Look for Gaps and New Questions
• If it isnt in the field notes, it never
  happened.
• Type up notes within 24 hours (preferably
  immediately after the interview is over

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Interviewing Groups

• Advantages
• More effective use of time
• Enables people to hear opinions of others and to
  agree or disagree
• Disadvantages
• Difficulty in scheduling
• Nominal Group Technique
• Facilitated process to support idea generation by
  groups
• Individuals work alone to generate ideas which
  are pooled under guidance of a trained
  facilitator

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Questionnaires

• A questionnaire is similar to a very structured
  interview
• Many of the same guidelines apply
• Choosing respondents
• Should be representative of all users
• Same types of samples
• Convenient
• Random sample
• Purposeful sample
• Stratified sample

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Questionnaires
Response rates to questionnaires are commonly
low over 15 is sometimes considered very good.
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Observation

• Directly Observing Users
• Serves as a good method to supplement interviews
• Often difficult to obtain unbiased data
• People often work differently when being observed
• Be cognizant of normal and abnormal conditions,
  e.g. entering an order vs. the end of quarter
  sales report

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Document/Procedure Analysis

• Great starting point
• Gets analyst quickly up to speed with user jargon
• Can create preliminary models, e.g. DFDs or ERDs
• Types of information to be discovered
• Problems with existing system
• Opportunity to meet new need
• Organizational direction
• Names of key individuals
• Values of organization
• Special information processing circumstances
• Reasons for current system design
• Rules for processing data

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Document/Procedure Analysis

• Four types of useful documents
• Written work procedures
• Describes how a job is performed
• Includes data and information used and created in
  the process of performing the job or task
• Business form
• Explicitly indicate data flow in or out of a
  system
• Report
• Enables the analyst to work backwards from the
  report to the data that generated it
• Description of current information system

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Joint Application Design

• Joint Application Design (JAD)
• Brings together key users, managers and systems
  analysts
• Purpose collect system requirements
  simultaneously from key people
• Conducted off-site

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Joint Application Design
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Joint Application Design

• Participants
• Session Leader
• Users
• Managers
• Sponsor
• Systems Analysts
• Scribe
• IS Staff

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Joint Application Design

• Supporting JAD with GSS
• Group support systems (GSS) can be used to enable
  more participation by group members in JAD
• Members type their answers into the computer
• All members of the group see what other members
  have been typing

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Joint Application Design

• End Result
• Documentation detailing existing system
• Consensus on features of proposed system
• CASE Tools During JAD
• Upper CASE tools are used
• Enables analysts to enter system models directly
  into CASE during the JAD session
• Screen designs and prototyping can be done during
  JAD and shown to users
• What is the apparent drawback with JAD?

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Prototyping

• Repetitive process
• Rudimentary version of system is built
• Replaces or augments SDLC
• Goal to develop concrete specifications for
  ultimate system

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Prototyping

• Quickly converts requirements to working version
  of system
• Once the user sees requirements converted to
  system, will ask for modifications or will
  generate additional requests
• Is prototyping useful in any of these cases?
• User requests are not clear
• Few users are involved in the system
• Designs are complex and require concrete form
• History of communication problems between
  analysts and users
• Tools are readily available to build prototype

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Prototyping

• Drawbacks
• Tendency to avoid formal documentation
• Difficult to adapt to more general user audience
• Sharing data with other systems is often not
  considered
• Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) checks are
  often bypassed

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Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

• Changes to the underlying Business Process (BP)
  can vary from project to project
• Minor changes to process (BP Automation)
• Moderate changes (BP Improvement)
• Major (BP Reengineering)
• BPR is the search for and implementation of
  radical change in business processes to achieve
  breakthrough improvements in products and
  services
• Some common BPR Goals
• Reorganize complete flow of data in major
  sections of an organization
• Eliminate unnecessary steps completely
• Combine steps, or
• Become more responsive to future change

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Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

• Identification of processes to reengineer
• Key business processes
• Set of activities designed to produce specific
  output for a particular customer or market
• Focused on customers and outcome
• Same techniques are used as were used for
  requirements determination

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Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

• Identify specific activities that can be improved
  through BPR
• Disruptive technologies
• Technologies that enable the breaking of
  long-held business rules that inhibit
  organizations from making radical business
  changes
• See table 7-7

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Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
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Summary

• There are many techniques for gathering
  information about functional requirements
• To minimize bias it is a good idea to use more
  than one technique
• Consider the pros and cons of each
• Theoretically you should gather information until
  saturation, i.e. you learn nothing new