Information Systems
College of Business Administration
University of Missouri - St. Louis

Interviewing and Data-Gathering Techniques

| Why Conduct Interviews? | Types of Interviews | Potential Interviewing Problems |
| Interviewing Guidelines | Possible Forms of Resistance During an Interview |

Why Conduct Interviews?

  • Much information may only be available from people, even if much is available in records
  • Need information about behavior of current system or requirements for a new system
  • Need to verify understanding (informal review of analysis)

Types of Interviews

  • live, face-to-face, with written notes (may be taped)
  • survey questionnaires (perhaps to gather information from many people, or people in different locations)

Other Sources of Information:

  • Questionnaires
  • Vendor Presentations
  • Visits to Other Installations
  • Data Collection
  • External Research

Potential Interviewing Problems

  • Interviewing the wrong people at the wrong time
  • Asking the wrong questions and getting the wrong answers
  • Creating bad feelings between parties

Interviewing Guidelines

Develop an Overall Interview Plan
  • Get an organizational chart
  • Determine who you need to speak to (clerical, managerial, executive)
  • Speak to people in the right order
  • Don't waste people's time!
Obtain Approval to Talk to the Users
  • Managers may want to choose the right people
  • Managers may want to avoid the wrong people
  • Managers may want to protect their workers' time
  • Managers may want to avoid personal issues
  • Managers may want to avoid political issues
Plan to Make Effective Use of Time
  • do work up front over the phone, email, ...
  • prepare a meeting agenda, questions (circulate in advance)
  • keep the interview to an hour or less
  • schedule a follow-up meeting to review material gathered
Use Automated Tools, but Don't Overdo It
  • use tools if they help all the parties
  • share tools with appropriate parties
  • don't let tools become a bottleneck to progress
Determine What the User in Interested In
  • let the users say what they want in an interview
  • use that information to estimate priorities
Use an Appropriate Interviewing Style
  • ask about relationships
  • ask different people for alternative viewpoints
  • probe for more detail when needed
  • ask about dependencies among data, processes, people
  • try paraphrasing what you interpret to see if you are understanding what people are saying

Possible Forms of Resistance During an Interview

  • You're taking up too much of my time.
  • You're threatening my job.
  • You don't know our business, so how can you tell use what the new system should look like?
  • You're trying to change the way we do things around here.
  • We don't want this system.
  • You're wasting our time asking these questions; what we want should be obvious.

Other Potential Problem Areas:

  • Discussion that focuses more on implementation than requirements
  • Confusion between symptoms and problems
  • Users who are unable to say what they want or change their mind
  • Disagreements among users, managers, ...

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Page Owner: Professor Sauter (Vicki.Sauter@umsl.edu)
© Vicki L. Sauter. All rights Reserved.