Collect Requirements Planning

Many information technology projects begin with gathering requirements from various sources. Functional requirements define how a system is to operate. Use this page for ideas on how to begin the process of gathering those requirements.

Stakeholders

Capture stakeholder project expectations through individual interviews or group meetings where the number of stakeholders is large.

Focus Groups

Hold one or more group meetings to brainstorm and discuss project functionality and deliverables. Participants are selected to ensure that they are a representative subgroup of the relevant target group of stakeholders or users of the project deliverables. Be sure to include representation from all stakeholder groups, e.g., IT specialist, data steward, end user.

Use Cases

Helps to define the functional requirements of a system by defining the complete series of events resulting from interactions with the system towards achieving some goal. One or more scenarios may be generated from each use case, corresponding to the detail of each possible way of achieving that goal.

Prototyping

A simulation of some to all aspects of a project that allows users to evaluate developers' proposals for the design of the eventual product by actually trying them out.