Elicitation

Elicitation is the process of information discovery, the information forming the precursors to requirements. The information will typically be raw and often heterogeneous, and it will not be until the requirements analysis phase is performed that true requirements will be able to be derived from it. Elicitation will take many forms, and all of the skills of the analyst will be needed to determine which documents, tools, people and processes to examine to discover the information. Some of these information source locations are listed in this table.

Location of requirements information

Requirements are not handed to the analyst on a plate but rather will be discovered in a variety of places including: by observing stakeholders performing their work, in business documents and a variety of other locations.

Source	Description
Observing Users	Observing users perform their work is a powerful way of gaining information about Requirements and often reveals details that would not be discovered by user interviews.
Business Documents	A number of business documents such as the Business Case, Vision or Concept of Operation will provide a source for Business Requirements and should be discovered and included as sources of Requirements.
Stakeholder Workshops	Getting all the important stakeholders into a workshop is a powerful and productive way to get information that will help with the Requirements definition. Typically there are fertile and robust discussions that provide the basis for deriving Requirements.
Current System Issues	There will often be documented information recording errors, faults and issues with the incumbent system that will provide the basis for Requirements for the replacement system. Care needs to be taken that any Requirements derived from these list are owned by a stakeholder and that there is a business need to include them in the new system.