What techniques do you use to gather requirements?
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Interviews and workshops
- Observation or job shadowing
- Document and system analysis
- Surveys and prototypes
- Choose technique based on context
Model answer
I choose techniques based on the situation and the stakeholders. One-to-one interviews are good for understanding goals and detailed problems. Workshops bring different groups together to agree on processes and resolve conflicts quickly. Observation, or job shadowing, is very useful because people often do things differently from how they describe them, and you see workarounds. I also do document analysis, looking at existing procedures, reports, forms and system screens. For large groups I may use surveys. When requirements are unclear, I use prototypes or wireframes, because people react better to something they can see. In all of these I ask open questions like how do you do this today and what happens when it goes wrong, and I confirm my understanding by summarising back to the stakeholder.
Can you answer it under time pressure?
Take a timed easy round and get scored on every answer.
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