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5 - PROJECT SCOPE MANAGEMENT

5.2.2 collect requirements: tools and techniques

5.2.2.1 Interviews

An interview is a formal or informal approach to elicit information from stakeholders by talking to them directly.
It is typically performed by asking prepared and spontaneous questions and recording the responses. Interviews
are often conducted on an individual basis between an interviewer and an interviewee, but may involve multiple
interviewers and/or multiple interviewees. Interviewing experienced project participants, sponsors and other
executives, and subject matter experts can aid in identifying and defining the features and functions of the desired
product deliverables. Interviews are also useful for obtaining confidential information.

5.2.2.2 Focus Groups

Focus groups bring together prequalified stakeholders and subject matter experts to learn about their
expectations and attitudes about a proposed product, service, or result. A trained moderator guides the group
through an interactive discussion, designed to be more conversational than a one-on-one interview.

5.2.2.3 Facilitated Workshops

Facilitated workshops are focused sessions that bring key stakeholders together to define product requirements.
Workshops are considered a primary technique for quickly defining cross-functional requirements and reconciling
stakeholder differences. Because of their interactive group nature, well-facilitated sessions can build trust, foster
relationships, and improve communication among the participants, which can lead to increased stakeholder
consensus. In addition, issues can be discovered earlier and resolved more quickly than in individual sessions.

For example, facilitated workshops called joint application design/development (JAD) sessions are used in the
software development industry. These facilitated sessions focus on bringing business subject matter experts and
the development team together to improve the software development process. In the manufacturing industry, quality
function deployment (QFD) is another example of a facilitated workshop technique that helps determine critical
characteristics for new product development. QFD starts by collecting customer needs, also known as voice of the
customer (VOC). These needs are then objectively sorted and prioritized, and goals are set for achieving them. User
stories, which are short, textual descriptions of required functionality, are often developed during a requirements
workshop. User stories describe the stakeholder who benefits from the feature (role), what the stakeholder needs to
accomplish (goal), and the benefit to the stakeholder (motivation). User stories are widely used with agile methods.

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