Ebooks (PDF):

Holding a requirements elicitation event without a plan can be likened to going to war without understanding your strengths and weaknesses. If you know what to do before, during and after an elicitation event, you will be better positioned to elicit accurate requirements and solve business problems.

A Beginner's Guide To Requirements Elicitation: What To Do Before The Event

Discover a world of quick tips that can be applied to organizing workshops, focus groups, interviews, and practically any event that involves interacting with a group of stakeholders to elicit information by triggering discussions and clarifying assumptions.

While there are no guaranteed and set-in-stone approaches to organizing successful elicitation events, the tips in this beginner's guide will significantly increase your chances of achieving the objectives of your event by exploring the power of visualization.

A Beginner's Guide To Requirements Elicitation: What To Do During The Event

A good facilitator knows when, how and why to question, listen, visualize, engage, empathise, manage issues and round up discussions to arrive at an accurate representation of requirements.

This eBook touches on each of the key activities that need to take place during a requirements elicitation event for success.

A Beginner's Guide To Requirements Elicitation: What To Do After The Event

From analysing data and preparing BA deliverables to supporting stakeholders through other stages of the solution development lifecycle, the role of the BA is certainly key to successful projects.

This guide touches on how to adopt different thinking styles, spot logical fallacies and identify the root causes of business problems. It's all about knowing what you need to do before you need to do it.

This collection also includes Elicitation Event Templates:

• A recommended checklist of activities to be completed before the elicitation event that will help you keep track of how ready you are.
• A template for preparing your event agenda
• Requirements Questionnaire & Response Template for organizing the questions to ask stakeholders and documenting the responses received. This questionnaire can be used before the event (for compiling questions or distributing to stakeholders prior to the event) or during the event (for taking note of responses received per question).
• A Questioning Framework section for thinking through the relevance of each question and organizing questions by priority.
• An Action Plan Template for recording and tracking stakeholders’ actions for increased visibility. The actions that a stakeholder needs to take to resolve issues can also be logged using this template. 
• A Requirements Specification Template that highlights relevant sections that should be filled out when describing requirements.
• System Requirements Questionnaire: Comprises 100 questions that can help to trigger discussions with stakeholders.

...and the Business Process Analysis Template Collection:

This collection of templates is targeted at process improvement projects and will help you ask the right questions while ensuring that you arrive at an accurate definition of business processes and the requirements to be fulfilled:

1. Business Process Analysis Questionnaire (BPAQ): 35 key questions for arriving at a comprehensive description of a business process (As-is) and identifying which improvements should be made to implement the revised (To-be) process. Also includes:

• Response/Requirements Tracking Sheet
• 35 process elements to define
• Process Improvement Action Plan Template
• Usage guide and new version updates
• Business Process Management (BPM) Links

2. Business Process Definition (BPD) Template: Provides a starting point for business analysts looking to create standard and comprehensive process definitions. Also includes:

• Sections for documenting 35 process elements contained in the Business Process Analysis Questionnaire
• Sample text or examples of what can go in each section
• Usage guide and new version updates

3. Business Process Functional Specification (BPFS) Template: Provides a starting point for business analysts looking to create standard and comprehensive requirements specification documents using a template that can easily be customized. There's no need to start from scratch. Also includes:

• Sample text or examples of what can go in each section
• A requirements specification template suited to smaller projects or projects that require less detail
• Usage guide and new version updates

4. Business Rule Documentation & Questionnaire (BRDQ): Provides a guideline for channeling discussions at elicitation events (workshops, focus groups, interviews, etc.) to focus on questions that trigger stakeholders to think about existing processes and the business rules that should be adhered to. Includes:

• Business Rule Questionnaire & Response Tracking Sheet
• Business Rule Documentation (BRD) Template
• Sample text or examples of what can go in each section
• Usage guide and new version updates

5. Business Terms Glossary: Provides a structure for your glossary that can be fleshed out depending on the requirements of your project and your own requirement to fill any existing knowledge gaps you have on the project.

All you need to do is fill in the blanks...

Download Previews

NEW ** Now contains a Minutes of Meeting Template for documenting the minutes of meetings held with stakeholders. All the relevant sections you need are included.**

NEW ** Now contains a Business Case Template for fleshing out the key sections of your business case before the elicitation event.**

NEW ** Change Request Form - this can be used for capturing details of change requests that come up during or after your project has been implemented.**