Interviewing and Data-Gathering Techniques
| Why Conduct Interviews? |
Types of Interviews |
Potential Interviewing Problems |
| Interviewing Guidelines |
Possible Forms of Resistance During an Interview |
- 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)
- 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
- Interviewing the wrong people at the wrong time
- Asking the wrong questions and getting the wrong answers
- Creating bad feelings between parties
- 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
- 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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