Benchmarking

It is a technique to gather information by comparing with existing product. This will help in getting new ideas and how to improve the performance of the current product. The comparison can be internal or external.

Benchmarking technique is used under the processes Collect Requirements and Plan Quality Management.

Prototypes

It is a technique to gather the information or feedback of the product developed based on initial requirements. The product which is in the demo stage or prototype or proof of concept stage will be shown to the stakeholders. Stakeholders will provide the input for further improvements if any. These inputs can be the final requirements which can be used for design or build phase.

This technique is very much suitable in Agile environment in the software development industry.

Prototypes technique is used under the process Collect Requirements.

Observations

When the product is already in the market and if you want to improve the product, the stakeholders who can provide the input is users. Unfortunately these users may not be able to express the requirements or reluctant to provide the requirements. In this situation, better to use the technique called Observations. Here you just watch how they are using the product or the process. Through this you should be able to collect lot of information.

This is also called as “Job shadowing”

Observations technique is used under the process Collect Requirements.

Questionnaires and Surveys

Predefined set of questions asked to identified stakeholders to gather the information quickly. It is more appropriate when the team is virtual.

Questionnaires and Surveys technique is used under the process Collect Requirements.

Group Decision Making Technique

This technique is used to generate, classify and prioritize the requirements which help in making decision about future outcome. This technique works in close with group creativity technique.

There are different ways how one can arrive at the decision. The methods followed will be in the order Unanimity, Majority, Plurality and Dictatorship.

Unanimity is nothing but all the stakeholders agrees for a particular action or requirement. Before applying unanimity, better to apply the anonymous. Anonymous is collecting the requirements from all the stakeholders in a different forum individually in secret. Anonymous is also called as Delhi technique. Once Delphi technique is achieved then unanimity becomes easier.

If unanimity is not working go for Majority. Majority is nothing but where more than 50% of the people are agreeing for the requirement.

Next is Plurality. When Majority is not achieved largest blocks in the group decides which is similar to elections in democratic countries.

Dictatorship is one individual makes the decision on the behalf of the group. This is used when none of the above helps.

Group Decision Making Technique is used under the processes Collect requirements, Validate Scope, Estimate Activity Durations and Estimate Costs processes.

Group Creativity Technique

This technique is used to collect and or to exchange information by involving many stakeholders. Some of the techniques under this category are Brainstorming, Nominal Group Technique, Idea or Mind mapping, Affinity diagram and Multi decision analysis.

Brainstorming is generating ideas. One idea generates another idea. Here just the ideas or the requirements will be collected and no voting is carried out.

Nominal Group Technique is the extension of Brainstorming. Here voting is used which helps in further brainstorming and also prioritization.

Idea or the Mind mapping is just a graphical representation of all the ideas which helps in understanding commonality and differences and can results in further ideas.

Affinity diagram helps in groups the ideas under different buckets so that this can help in further analysis.

Multi decision analysis is extension of all the above techniques which helps in analyzing from the risk angle.

Group Creativity Technique is used under the process Collect Requirements.

Facilitated Workshops

Facilitated Workshops technique is more of interaction between different stakeholders coming from different functions having wide range of expertise. This is more of cross functional than focusing on specific group.

For example Join Application development(JAD) will be used where the SME from different function and the development team will be participating to gather and exchange of information.

Facilitated Workshops techniques is used under the process Collect requirements, Define Scope processes.