Elicitation is the way in which information is derived from the stakeholders to discover the requirements for the solution while collaboration is when two or more people work together to achieve a common goal or objective.
As a business analyst, you have to be able to understand the needs of the business.
To do this you have to obtain information from the stakeholder so we use elicitation and collaborative techniques to gather this information and understand the business needs.
Business analysts use both elicitation and collaboration to reach a mutual understanding on business analysis information.
Elicitation and collaboration activities can be either planned or unplanned.
An example of a planned activity is an interview while an unplanned elicitation task are unscheduled telephone calls.
There are 5 tasks defined in the elicitation and collaboration knowledge area of the BABOK and these tasks are:
a. Prepare for elicitation: this task involves informing the relevant stakeholders of the information they need to provide and the expected outcome of the elicitation and collaboration activity.
b. Conduct elicitation: This task is the actual work that is done by the business analyst to gather the requirements of the stakeholder.
c. Confirm elicitation results: This task involves asking the stakeholders to verify the elicited information to confirm if it is actually what they need.
d. Communicate business analysis information: In this task, the business analyst shares the confirm requirements with the stakeholders.
e. Manage stakeholder collaboration: this task involves managing the stakeholders to ensure that the elicitation and collaborative activities are successful.