Customer Insights

On occasion I get out of the cage and get involved with some good old-fashioned training. In this case, the class was an essentials course for business analysis. BA work is less about crunching numbers and more about supporting the success of enterprise-level projects. Not all business analysis work is specific to IT, but there is significant overlap as the business analyst serves as a bridge between the technical and business users.

One of the primary tasks associated with the business analyst role is that of elicitation. The business needs which drive projects must be converted into actionable statements that a development team can execute on. The elicitation phase is about drawing out those requirements from project stakeholders.

There are several ways to elicit the business requirements. Most take an investigative approach and include personal interviews, focus groups, workshops, observation and yes you guessed it…surveys!

If you are a business analyst or project manager and the users and stakeholders you need to query are geographically diverse then a survey approach can meet your needs. Surveys also offer the option of anonymity and can be conducted quickly, especially if you are using an online survey tool to invite participation and capture response.

Surveys are valid tools if you need to gather a lot of information from user groups. They will not provide the same depth of information that a qualitative approach, such as a personal interview or focus group would, but they offer the benefit of generalizability. This means that, depending upon your sampling plan, you can generalize results from your survey to the broader population.

To execute an effective survey, that is one which captures data in the format you need to answer key questions for the elicitation process, requires pre-planning and significant attention to detail. It is suggested that you solicit the assistance of a colleague versed in marketing or survey research.

Elicitation for business analysis purposes requires that we gather feedback from key stakeholders including both executives and those in the trenches. Personal dialog through qualitative methods is one option, but if your audience is geographically diverse and large in size then consider a formalized survey as part of your process.