Last Q&A

This question is the fundamental of Business Analysis. Without Elicitation we don't really have much. The foundation of our job is elicitation. Elicitation is where the BA distinguish themselves from other professions. If you don't ask the right questions, if you don't get the right information, you can do as much analysis, communication or documentation as you desire .... your requirements will be no good if you do not pay careful attention to elicitation.

The questions was:

Eliciting Requirements means:

Most of you said answered: To gather requirements from stakeholders (50% chose this)

The right answer is: To draw forth or bring out something latent or potential (18% got it right)

Here you have to pay attention to the meaning of words. To gather means to collect or to bring together. When you gather requirements, you are passively going around and collecting requirements from stakeholders. When I was young my grand mother used to take us out in the forest to pick mushrooms (I will tell you about my background in another story). Mushrooms grow by themselves on the ground and don't need special tools to gather them. You can easily pick them with your hands. Here picking mushrooms is the same as gathering requirements. There is no efforts; it doesn't require thinking, preparing or any tools or techniques. If eliciting was the same as picking mushrooms, everyone could call themselves Business Analysts.

But our profession requires that we actively pull requirements from stakeholders. Sounds pretty aggressive huh! Now, for your imagination, think of collecting apples. We all know that apples grow on trees. In order to collect apples you either have to climb on the tree to get one apple at the time or you can shake the tree for a faster result. This act of climbing or shaking requires a lot of effort. It requires planning, creativity, strategy, tools, techniques... etc. That's what happens when you are eliciting requirements. Elicitation means: To draw or bring forth the requirements. This is a skill, a science and an art. For more references see section 4.1 of your BABOK.

Note: If you think picking fallen apples is also an efficient way to collect apples, think again. Fallen apples are not usually good apples. For you to distinguish the good ones from the bad ones, you will have to cut them (waste) to make sure they are still good (worms may reside inside). Same with requirements... the ones that are obvious or easy to get requires that you dig deeper to draw out more details (those requirements may have hidden assumptions).