The whole point of the elicitation and collaboration activity is to gather the requirements of the solution.
The conduct elicitation task is used to achieve this by identifying information that is relevant to the change.
There are three types of elicitation and they are:
1. Collaborative: this involves direct interaction with the stakeholders to gather information based on their experience, judgement and expertise.
2. Research: this involves gathering information from materials such as documentation, meeting minutes, emails and other data sources.
It does not always involve direct interaction with the stakeholders but some stakeholders might be involved in the task.
3. Experiments: this involves identifying results based on tests which were run in a controlled environment. These experiments include proof of concepts, observational studies and prototypes.
To ensure the success of the elicitation activity, there are two elements that can and they are:
a. Guide elicitation activity: when a group of people come together to share opinions, ideas and experiences on a topic that is important to them, things can get very chaotic very fast.
It is very important that the business analyst is able to guide the elicitation activities to ensure that it stays on topic and achieves the desired outcome. This applies to each elicitation activity which occurs throughout the change.
The business analyst should consider some of the following when guiding the elicitation activity:
- The elicitation goals
- The scope of the change
- How the output integrates into what is already known
- Who would provide the information
- Who will use the information
- How the information will be used
b. Capture elicitation outcomes: Capturing the outcomes of the elicitation activity is not a one off activity, it is ongoing activity that will occur throughout the change so it has to be done right.
Capturing the elicitation outcomes helps ensure that the information produced during the elicitation activities is recorded for documentation and reference purposes.