Challenges in obtaining requirements

What is obtaining requirements?

Obtaining requirements is the most communication-intensive part of the requirements process. During requirements elicitation, the business analyst must interact with stakeholders in many different types of elicitation sessions to determine user requirements for a project.

Why obtaining requirements?

Without complete, correct and consistent requirements, a project is doomed to failure. This makes it a very critical part of the requirements process. It is also very prone to errors due to the unpredictability of human nature in communication.

In many situations, users are not sure what to look for in a new system or product and have trouble articulating their real needs. It is up to the business analyst to use the proper elicitation techniques to successfully elicit user needs.

The need for a business analyst

Obtaining requirements cannot be done casually by simply asking the user to tell the developers what they want. In many cases, users do not know how the software is created and cannot describe their needs in a way that developers can work on.

On the other hand, developers are generally unfamiliar with the real issues that users are facing, so it is easy for them to misinterpret what they are saying. That is why for the business analyst role to bridge the gap between business users, the project team is very much needed.

Challenges with obtaining requirements

Other challenges the business analyst may encounter during the procurement process include:

• Conflicting requirements of different stakeholders
• Implicit or assumed requirements
• Difficulty accessing the right stakeholders
• The unwillingness of stakeholders to change or help design a new product.
• Not enough time has been allocated to meet with all the important stakeholders.

The key to overcoming these challenges as you generate requirements is to continually motivate your users, developers, and customers to communicate and cooperate with each other. You can do this by selecting the appropriate elicitation techniques.