Software Requirements are description of features and functionalities of the target system. Requirements provide the expectations of users from the software product. The requirements can be obvious or hidden, known or unknown, expected or unexpected from client’s point of view.

The main purpose of collecting requirements process is gathering stakeholder requirements in a project. Requirements collection is performed as part of the project definition process. Requirements collection is started when the project need is first clarified and the project solution is to be proposed. Requirements refinement continues after the project is selected and as the scope is defined, aligned and approved. Collecting Requirements is an important activity in project management. Because requirements of a project define the project scope. And any weakness in requirements management will cause scope issues respectively.

There are certain techniques to collect requirements for the Software Development and they are stated below:

• Interviewing

It can be done through a meeting, through a phone call or through emails. In this collect requirements technique Project Manager interviews the stakeholders to get their requirements. There can be a checklist, a list of questions or project manager can just ask the stakeholders to express their expectations from the project in a free form. Project manager notes down and stores the requirements received from the project stakeholders.

• Focus Group

It is used to get a specific set of stakeholders’ requirements. For instance, you can organize a meeting with executive directors in your company to get their requirements first, and then organize a separate meeting with the functional managers to get their requirements.

• Facilitated Workshops

In facilitated workshops, stakeholders with different perspectives are brought together. Let’s consider that you will manage a software project. You can bring analysts, software developers, test engineers, operation team, and customer together. Each group of project stakeholders will look to the project from their perspective and express their requirements. For instance, operation team will consider operational aspects, the customer will express business requirements, software developers will state the technical requirements.

• Brainstorming

It is actually a Group Think. Several people come together to list requirements of a project. And during the meeting, new ideas are generated from existing ideas. This helps to identify new requirements.

• Nominal Group Technique

This is actually a collect requirements process technique to prioritize ideas rather than generating new requirements. In nominal group technique, meeting participants rank the most successful ideas. This helps to focus on more valuable or prioritized ideas first in generating project requirements. Nominal group technique is usually used in brainstorming meetings. Because there will be several ideas coming from several stakeholders. If these are not ranked, focusing the stakeholders on a narrower topic and finalizing requirements will be tough.

• Mind Mapping

This collect requirements process technique is actually a diagram of ideas or notes to help generate, classify, or record information. Ideas or parts of a project are drawn on the table, and new ideas or parts that can be in the project are generated. For an example, an airplane will consist of parts such as wings, cockpit area, tail, and passenger cabin. And when thinking about what can be in the passenger area, we can list toilets, seats, serving kitchen area etc.

• Affinity Diagrams

Ideas generated from any other requirements gathering techniques are sorted into groups by similarities. For instance, requirements for cockpit area, requirements about passenger area, requirements about tails etc. can be grouped. Affinity Diagrams collect requirements process technique helps to see additional scope or risks. Because similar requirements will be seen together under the same group which will ease to see if there will be any more requirements or if there are any further risks regarding a group of requirements.

• Questionnaires and Surveys

It is used for large groups where there are several stakeholders that you have to collect their requirements. Let’s consider that you have more than 200 stakeholders in a project that you need to contact and collect their requirements. Organizing a meeting or interviewing one-by-one will take a long time to finalize requirements. In this case, to prepare a questionnaire and survey and to collect requirements of several stakeholders will be easier with this technique.

• Observation

A potential user of the product is watched to identify requirements. For instance, in order to determine the user experience or most used features of an e-commerce shopping website, a consumer can be observed. Based on the steps that the consumer will take, project requirements can be identified or prioritized.

• Bench-marking

A company compares its actual or planned practices, to those of comparable organizations to identify best practices. Because a company must be profitable to survive in the market. And in order to be profitable, it has to know the market dynamics, competitors in the market, its strengths and weaknesses against competitors. And projects must be initiated to take a position in the market accordingly. For instance, if Samsung benchmarks its test processes with the Apple’s, this is an example of bench-marking. Because they are both in the smartphone and tablet market and they are competitors.