| To choose the most suitable trawling techniques for a business event, you need to consider the following issues: What are the potential sources of knowledge? What type of requirement are you searching for: policy architecture, stored data, person-machine interface, essential activity? Will you be able to speak directly to people? Is the knowledge conscious, unconscious, or undreamed of?
Here are some guidelines on the strengths of a number of trawling techniques: Review the current situation. - Good for uncovering unconscious requirements - Helps when adding new requirements or doing maintenance changes to an existing system - Use as the basis of business process reengineering
Apprentice with the user. - Helps to uncover unconscious and conscious requirements - Useful when users are "too busy" to talk
Determine the essential requirements. - Helps to separate requirements from solutions - A good way to understand the real purpose of the system - Helps in uncovering unconscious requirements and provides insights that trigger undreamed-of requirements
Interview the users. - A good technique for discovering conscious requirements
Brainstorm. - Helps uncover undreamed-of requirements - Very useful when inventing new products with unknown/potential users
Conduct use case workshops. - Involves the users in explaining vague, complex, and difficult events - Good for uncovering conscious and unconscious requirements
Undertake document archaeology. - Used when your source of information is documents
Build event models. - If the business event boundaries are vague, then investigate them by doing some detailed systems analysis modeling.
Make requirements videos. - Useful when users' time is limited - Can be studied, analyzed, and used by a group after the video is made - Helps when the context is vague
See Chapter 5, Trawling for Requirements, for more guidance on trawling techniques. |