Summary

Elicit stakeholder needs, expectations, constraints, and interfaces for all phases of the product lifecycle.

Description

Eliciting goes beyond collecting requirements by proactively identifying additional requirements not explicitly provided by customers. Additional requirements should address the various product lifecycle activities and their impact on the product.

 

Examples of techniques to elicit needs include the following:
  • Technology demonstrations
  • Interface control working groups
  • Technical control working groups
  • Interim project reviews
  • Questionnaires, interviews, and scenarios (operational, sustainment, and development) obtained from end users
  • Operational, sustainment, and development walkthroughs and end-user task analysis
  • Quality attribute elicitation workshops with stakeholders
  • Prototypes and models
  • Brainstorming
  • Quality Function Deployment
  • Market surveys
  • Beta testing
  • Extraction from sources such as documents, standards, or specifications
  • Observation of existing products, environments, and workflow patterns
  • Use cases
  • User stories
  • Delivering small incremental “vertical slices” of product functionality
  • Business case analysis
  • Reverse engineering (for legacy products)
  • Customer satisfaction surveys


 

Examples of sources of requirements that may not be identified by the customer include the following:
  • Business policies
  • Standards
  • Previous architectural design decisions and principles
  • Business environmental requirements (e.g., laboratories, testing and other facilities, information technology infrastructure)
  • Technology
  • Legacy products or product components (reuse product components)
  • Regulatory statutes


Example Work Products



  1. Results of requirements elicitation activities


Subpractices



  1. Engage relevant stakeholders using methods for eliciting needs, expectations, constraints, and external interfaces.