Part I

Requirements Elicitation at a Glance

Requirements elicitation is the process of gathering business requirements for a new business solution. Requirements elicitation activities are designed to draw out, extract, or otherwise obtain requirements for a new or changed business solution from business experts. The new or changed business solution may be a manual business process and/or an IT-enabled business system. Before elicitation takes place, the need for the business solution has been identified during the enterprise analysis activities of the business solution life cycle and the initial requirements and scope of the project have been defined. Figure 1-1 depicts the business solution life cycle (BSLC), our common framework for discussion in this series. Refer to The Business Analyst as Strategist: Translating Business Strategies into Valuable Solutions, another volume in this series, for a detailed discussion of the activities that lead up to project selection and funding.