Requirements Elicitation

Purpose

Choose and plan the right elicitation mix across interviews, questionnaires, workshops, observation, and prototypes.

Use when

• requirements are incomplete or unreliable
• stakeholders need structured elicitation
• you must decide how to gather evidence, not just what the requirements are

Inputs

• project or problem context
• goals and constraints
• known stakeholders, systems, and documents
• level of formality required

Procedure

1. Clarify elicitation objectives and scope.
2. Decide which techniques fit the context and why.
3. Produce interview plans and question banks where needed.
4. Produce workshop agenda and facilitation plan where needed.
5. Produce questionnaire or observation plan where needed.
6. Recommend prototypes/mock-ups if textual requirements are insufficient.
7. Consolidate findings into a structured requirements discovery pack.
8. Highlight contradictions, missing stakeholders, and follow-up actions.

Outputs

• elicitation strategy
• interview packs
• workshop plan
• questionnaire or observation plan
• prototype recommendation
• findings summary

Guardrails

• Explicitly separate fact, inference, and assumption.
• Prefer evidence-backed conclusions over polished speculation.
• Where conflict exists, record it rather than smoothing it away.
• Produce artifacts that can be inspected, edited, and reused.

Completion criteria

• deliverable pack exists
• tradeoffs are explicit
• unknowns are logged
• next decisions are obvious