Business Requirements Analysis: Questionnaires and Interviews

This report presents a systematic process of gathering requirements for the IT system of BB company. It discusses the proposed technology solution and end users of the proposed solution. The report also covers the methods of requirement elicitation, including conducting interviews and discussions with users and distribution and collection of questionnaires. It highlights the benefits and disadvantages of each method and recommends the interview method for requirement elicitation.

Business Requirements Analysis Assignment 4
Requirement analysis
Questionnaires and Interviews
[DATE]
The University of Melbourne
[Company address]

Business Requirements Analysis Assignment 4
Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
Proposed technology solution..............................................................................................3
End users of the proposed solution......................................................................................3
Methods of requirement elicitation......................................................................................4
CONDUCT INTERVIEWS AND DISCUSSIONS WITH USERS................................4
Distribution as well as collection of Questionnaires........................................................4
Requirement elicitation methods application in BB system................................................4
Interview technique application.......................................................................................4
The system has different types of users as mentioned in above section. Interview shall
be conducted in following steps:......................................................................................4
Questionnaire technique application................................................................................5
Requirement gathering process............................................................................................6
Interviews.........................................................................................................................6
Questionnaire technique...................................................................................................6
Overcome techniques used...............................................................................................6
Recommendation of approach for requirement elicitation...................................................7
Conclusion............................................................................................................................7
References............................................................................................................................9
Proposed approach to requirements elicitation

Business Requirements Analysis Assignment 4
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Introduction
The project is about a company known as BB that provides several different Banking services to
customers in and around Australia. Owing to an increasing number of customer complaints in the past 2
years, the company has decided to go ahead with a dedicated IT system. This is supposed to help the
company in streamlining their operations of processing loans, opening saving accounts and so on. The
below mentioned report will present a systematic process of gathering requirements for the IT system so
that the needs of the organization can be captured well and in return they can be provided with a working
solution that alleviates their day to day business problems.
Proposed technology solution
Decision Support System (DSS)
A decision support system or DSS is nothing but an interactive system that allows key members of the organization
such as Managers, Executives and stakeholders to take better decision. The system help them to identify and solve
the problems. The DSS system is nothing but a broad mixture of several different technologies namely data and
document management, communication technologies, knowledge management, report generation and so on. DSS
allows these key decision makers in their process of decision making. As mentioned previously, it is used by any
person who is responsible to take decisions. Simply put DSS is any software system that enhances a person’s ability
to take decision. However, over a period time, DSS have evolved to a point where it’s a culmination of multiple
systems and have advanced business intelligence and data analysis built into them, that goes a step further in
helping a person take decisions.
End users of the proposed solution
Following are key end users of the system:
 Front office staff (Customer service officer) – The staff needs to take car loan requirements of the
customer and also gather necessary documents. Along with this, type of customer i.e. new or
existing is also recorded by the service staff. All information is recorded in the pdf document.
 Back office staff – The staff takes pdf document created by customer service officer as input.
Depending on the type of customer, data is fed in the respective existing systems. The application
and documents are fed in the current system. This staff is also interested in the credit history of the
customer
 External credit checking agency – This user will provide information regarding the credit history of
the customer. This process is not carried by the internal staff of the company. It is also responsible
to provide information regarding the quality of car to the BB system.
 Customers – This user is an external end-user who is interested in taking car loan from the
company. He/she will file an car loan application, provide all necessary documents to BB company
and credit checking agency.
 Management executive – This user is interested in generating reports with different criteria and
also responsible to check for any complaints by the customers in loan taking process (Fujita and
Johannesson, 2002).
Methods of requirement elicitation
CONDUCT INTERVIEWS AND DISCUSSIONS WITH USERS

Business Requirements Analysis Assignment 4
One of the most effective way of understanding the business rules and functions is by interviewing
stakeholders. It is also among the most time-consuming process, yet it is the most suited one in this
case. The system analysis in this method, would typically meet a group of users with different
questions for them. They would ask these analysts these questions and continue a dialogue until they
feel that they’ve received a certain degree of requirements. Usually, this process is divided in several
sessions for each user or even the user group.
In order to conduct successful interviews, an analyst would be working in three distinct areas: a)
Preparation for the interview b) Conducting the interview and c) Follow up for the given interview.
Distribution as well as collection of Questionnaires
Questionnaires have a very specialized but limited use in the area of gathering information. The
primary benefit is that it allows for the team to collect information from a large group of users at
once. Irrespective of the geographical distribution of stakeholders, the requirements can still be
gathered.
The questionnaire method can be used by the team to collect information whenever needed. This
allows the system analysts to understand and figure out areas that need further research via other
methods such as interviews, observation and industry reports etc.
Requirement elicitation methods application in BB system
Interview technique application
The system has different types of users as mentioned in above section. Interview shall be conducted in
following steps:
Step 1: Selecting interviewees – Firstly, an interview schedule shall be conducted which has three main
elements: Name of the interviewee (end-user), purpose of the interview, location of interview and time of
the interview (Hanif and Sajjad Rizvi, 2010).
End-user Purpose Location Timing
Customer service
officer
Current issues in
application
processing
BB office [Date]
Back office staff Current issues in
entering data in the
system.
Issues with
communicating with
credit agency
BB office [Date]
External credit
agency
Issues in
communicating with
customer and
company
BB office [Date]
Customer Duplication issues,
rejections in spite of
correct document
submission
BB office [Date]
Management Complaints from the
customers (Koelsch,
2016).
BB office [Date]

Business Requirements Analysis Assignment 4
Step 2 - Designing Interview Questions
To conduct interview, a list of questions has to be prepared which will contain three types of questions,
closed-ended questions, open-ended questions and probing questions. Closed-ended questions shall help
the business analyst to control the interview and retrieve the information they require. There is a specific
answer to these types of questions. In this case, following closed-ended questions can be asked (Lu and
Jin, 2000):
 How many car loan applications are received in a day?
 How many car loan applications get rejected in a day?
However, these questions do not cover the “Why” perspective of the case.
Open-ended questions are those questions which need an elaborated answers to the questions. They are
descriptive in nature. In this BB case, following open-ended questions can be asked:
 How are the applications processed at front end office?
 What types of errors occur during feeding data?
 Why does an application gets rejected?
In probing questions, more elaborative details are required on what has already been discussed but analyst
is still unclear over certain aspects. In the BB case, following probing questions can be asked:
 Can an example be given for a pending-for-approval loan car application?
 Can the back end process be more elaborative?
Step 3 – Interview preparation
Before approaching or even starting the interview, an interview plan shall be prepared depending on the
type of user. In BB case, different set of interview questions hall be prepared for all different users. Each
interview plan shall also include the anticipated answers along with a follow-up action plan.
Step 4 – Conduct Interview
The interview shall take place in BB office premises except for customer and credit checking agency.
These are external users. Customer can be contacted over phone or any current customer who is willing to
be a volunteer. Representative of credit checking company can be called and interview can be conducted.
Step 5 – Post-Interview Follow-up
After all users have been interviewed, an interview report will be prepared which provided information
like interview notes, what all information has been gathered about the entire car loan process, what all
questions need another round of interview and a summary in a meaningful manner.
Questionnaire technique application
The implementation of questionnaire in developing proposed system for BB company is similar to the

Business Requirements Analysis Assignment 4
interviews. However, in questionnaire instead of selecting every person to answer the question, a subset of
users is selected. Next, step is to design questionnaire which is again consist mainly of closed-ended
questions. The questions should be consistent without much variation (Valacich, George and Hoffer,
2014). After designing, it is required to administer the questionnaire. Business analyst needs to ensure that
all the target users should send the questionnaire duly-filled. Like interview, administering questionnaire
should be followed by questionnaire report containing summary of the questionnaire.
Requirement gathering process
Interviews
The main benefits of interviews
 It’s best suited for understanding complex requirements.
 Ambiguities are cleared quickly.
 More efforts by the interviewee as the person is being interviewed face-to-face.
 Non-responsiveness of the interviewee remains low.
 Helps provide the overview of the entire system.
The mains disadvantages for the interviews are
 Only a subset of people is involved as opposed to questionnaires.
 Quite difficult to fix meetings because it would need a dedicated session.
 Quality of overall data gathered is heavily dependent on the person interviewing.
 Interviews often require follow ups to be done and that may not be the case always as the
interviewees may be busy in other things.
 These are expensive and time-consuming as well.
Questionnaire technique
In order to make the Questionnaires work appropriately in this case, it would require attention to details
and a well-drawn questionnaire. It should also mention time limit as to when the questionnaires has to be
returned.
The main advantages in questionnaire techniques are:
 It tends to reach a large part of the audience.
 It requires significantly less efforts.
 It requires significantly less time.
 It is also cost-effective.
 The questionnaires can be drawn by an expert one-time and need not require several interviewers
to be able to handle interviews.
 It’s easier at the end of audience as well.
The main disadvantages to this process are:
 This is not a two-way dialogue, so the conversations can never be progressive.
 There cannot be any follow-ups if the interviewer wishes to know something more.
 Questions could often be misinterpreted.
 Sometimes ambiguities may arise.
 Some people may not put in the required efforts to fill the questionnaire.
Overcome techniques used
As mentioned above, both of the techniques have their own set of inherent flaws and needs to be
overcome. As a result, certain techniques and workarounds shall be used to overcome the issues faced by

Business Requirements Analysis Assignment 4
both of the methods provided above.
 Emailing the interviewees in advance to decide upon the date and time of the meeting. The agenda
and the duration for the respective meeting shall also be shared.
 Also mentioning the interviewees, that there may be a follow-up within 5 days of the initial
meeting.
 Providing as much clarity as possible in the questionnaire, yet keeping it brief and simple.
 Apart from this, for the questionnaire, it will be mandatory for the person filling it up to mention
his or her contact details and preferable time to contact them in case a further follow-up is required.
 Providing additional comment areas to capture additional information not mentioned elsewhere in
the form.
Recommendation of approach for requirement elicitation
On the basis of application, pros and cons of both the methods, interview method is recommended for the
analysing the proposed system of BB company. This method takes into consideration all types of users i.e.
from customer to management. It helps in gathering considerable details of the current system. Since it
takes place face-to-face, in case user fees hesitates in answering any questions, interviewer can make the
user comfortable by changing the sequence of questions and also replacing open-ended questions with the
closed-ended questions (Wundenberg, 2014). As compare to questionnaire, interview method can gather
much more information because it has open-ended questions. For instance: Questionnaire can only answer
questions such as –
 How many car loan applications are received in a day?
 How many car loan applications get rejected in a day?
This will just give a number but not the likely reasons behind the rejection and approval of the
applications.
But it cannot answer questions like –
 How are the applications processed at front end office?
 What types of errors occur during feeding data?
 Why does an application gets rejected?
These questions much more details about the loopholes in the car loan process. So this method will not
help in providing details to come up with a solution for such a complicated system.
Conclusion
The report provided an overview of requirement gathering process that will be used for the IT System in
question. The IT System in question is the Decision Support System and the requirements for the same
shall be gathered with the help of Questionnaires and Interviews process. The report provided a framework
on how the questionnaires and the interviews will be designed that would ultimately help in gathering of
the requirements. The report also highlighted the importance of these process and if the requirements are
not gathered completely, it would have a significant bearing on the ultimate usability of the system.

Business Requirements Analysis Assignment 4

Business Requirements Analysis Assignment 4
Your model (Continued)
Domain model diagram
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Business Requirements Analysis Assignment 2 – Part D
Optional assumptions
References
Fujita, H. and Johannesson, P., 2002. New Trends in Software Methodologies, Tools and Techniques. 1st
ed. Amsterdam: IOS Press/Ohmsha, pp.22-24.
Hanif, M. and Sajjad Rizvi, U., 2010. Issues and Challenges of Requirement Elicitation in Large Web
Projects. 1st ed. Saarbrücken: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, pp.110-112.
Koelsch, G., 2016. Requirements Writing for System Engineering. 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: Apress, pp.12-
14.
Lu, R. and Jin, Z., 2000. Domain modeling-based software engineering. 1st ed. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp.20-
22.
Valacich, J., George, J. and Hoffer, J., 2014. Essentials of systems analysis and design. 1st ed. USA:
Pearson, pp.24-16.
Wundenberg, S., 2014. Requirement engineering for knowledge-intensive processes. 1st ed. USA:
Pearson, pp.112-113.
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