What are the best practices for capturing requirements accurately during elicitation?

Listen with empathy , do not just hear !! Do not think of solution at the same time when you are taking to a user. Understand business goals

In project journey, wisdom blooms, unravelling a labyrinth through meticulous rooms; clarity's beacon, questions adeptly sown, crafting triumph in insights grown. Essential for success is precision in requirements—a puzzle unlocked through groundwork, listening, & strategic questioning. Begin with a clear scope, identify stakeholders. Use visual aids for comprehension. Document promptly, validate through engagement, prioritize clarity, specificity, avoiding ambiguity. Regular updates ensure adaptability; tools like requirement management systems enhance efficiency. Pose tailored queries, employ optimal elicitation techniques for comprehensive input. Active involvement fosters dialogue, deepening insights. #ProjectWisdom #PrecisionSuccess

If you have got several stakeholders try to conduct workshops. It is always helpful to gather all the stakeholders all togethere at the same place. One of the options is to conduct one-to-one interview but it deffinetely will be more time consuming. If your stakeholders are suffering from lack of time, prepare survey or questionnaire to them so they can provide information offline in there own schedule. When there are not enough creative ideas use creative techniques (eg. brainstorming, 6 thinking hats etc.) When you are facing existing product try to dive deep inside existing documentation. One of the options here - system archeology.

It's also possible to use the 5W1H technique to gather requirements and ask the right questions : W - What? W - Who? W - Why? W - Where? W - When? H - How? / How much? So by trying to systematize the interview, we end up with more details and information.

Questions should help you to define the border between system and irrelevant environment. Otherwise you may ask questions that are not valid for certain product.

A best practice for asking the right questions when capturing requirements, is to ensure that business stakeholders are giving business requirements [business needs, business rules, etc] and not attempt to design a solution or product themselves. Design comes later. Effective elicitation often requires the business analyst to clarify both the business stakeholders role, and the difference between requirements and specifications.

Listening actively and then presenting what you gathered from the discussion Back to the deliverer will help ensure you truly captured what they meant to convey.

It also possible that during requirements elicitation process there will appear some unexpected questions. Be ready to "park" them to provide the response later. Important point here is to fix the question and provide transparent sequnce of steps what will happen with question after meeting and who is responsible for providing an answer.