Interview Techniques and Guidelines

Modern Systems Analysis and Design - Chapter 6

• Learning Objectives: Describe interview options, planning, advantages/pitfalls of observation, business document analysis, computing support for requirement determination, and participation in JAD sessions. Also, use prototyping, describe contemporary approaches, and understand techniques for e-commerce applications.

Performing Requirements Determination

• Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC): A process with phases including planning, analysis, design, implementation, and maintenance. The analysis phase is highlighted as a crucial step for determining system requirements.

The Process of Determining Requirements

• Analyst Characteristics: Impertinence (question everything), impartiality (consider all perspectives), relaxation of constraints, attention to detail, and reframing (challenging assumptions).

Organizational Components to Understand

• Business Objectives: Define the purpose and how work operates.
• Information Needs: Describes the information necessary for personnel to do their jobs.
• Data: Including definition, volume, size, data movement, transformation, and storage processes.
• Dependencies/Sequences: How tasks relate to one another.
• Data Handling Rules: Specifies the rules for dealing with data.
• Business Policies/Guidelines: Organizational rules governing procedures and operations
• Key Events: Crucial moments in the process of completing tasks

Deliverables and Outcomes

• Interview/Observation: Interview transcripts, observation notes, meeting minutes.
• Written Documents: Mission/strategy statements, business documents, procedure manuals, job descriptions, training materials, system documentation, flowcharts.
• Computerized Sources: JAD session results, CASE repositories, reports from existing systems, prototypes.

Traditional Methods

• Interviewing Individuals/Groups: Method for gathering information from individuals or groups.
• Observing Workers: Directly observing employees in their work environment.
• Studying Business Documents: Analysing existing documents for insights into system requirements

Interviewing and Listening

• Interview Guide: A document created for developing, planning, and conducting interviews.

Guidelines for Effective Interviewing

• Planning: Set appointment, prepare priming questions, prepare an agenda, checklist, and questions.
• Listening: Listen carefully to gather information and document details, including non-verbal clues.
• Documentation: Note taking (record if permitted).
• Review: Review notes promptly (within 48 hours).
• Neutrality: Avoid biases and personal interpretations.
• Diversity: Seek various perspectives.

Interview Outline

• Interviewee Information: Name, location, medium, objectives.
• Interviewer Information: Name, date, time, experience.
• Agenda: Introduction, project background, interview topics, recording permission, questions, summary, and closing.

Choosing Interview Questions

• Open-ended Questions: Questions with no specified answers (unstructured).
• Closed-ended Questions: Questions with choices to select from (structured).

Interviewing Guidelines (continued)

• Non-Leading Questions: Do not phrase questions to imply a right or wrong answer.
• Active Listening: Listen carefully and engage in active listening during interview sessions.
• Quick Documentation: Record interview notes rapidly after the interview.
• Realistic Expectations: Do not create expectations for the system until the specifics are agreed upon.
• Diverse Perspectives: Collect feedback and opinions from various parties involved.

Interviewing Groups

• Drawbacks to Individual Interviews: Contradictions between responses, time-consuming follow-ups, or new questions from follow-up interviews needing additional interviews.
• Group Advantages: Effective time use, simultaneous agreement/disagreement identification, and synergistic collaboration
• Group Disadvantages: Difficulty scheduling compared to interviews with individuals.

Nominal Group Technique (NGT)

• Process: Team members independently work and generate ideas, writing them down. A facilitator reads and records all ideas openly discussed.

Directly Observing Users

• Observational Technique: Watch users perform tasks relevant to the system, allowing for first-hand observed measures.
• Limitations: The participants may change their behaviour due to being observed, and it is time-consuming.

Analyzing Documentation

• Documents Examination: Review existing documents for insights about system requirements, and understand historic and formal views.
• Document Types: Includes processes, work procedures, business forms, reports, and documentation of existing information systems.
• Identifying Issues: Discover problems with the current system, opportunities for improvement, and organizational perspectives.

Analyzing Procedures (continued)

• Useful Documents: Work procedure - describes how a task or job is performed (includes input data and output information).
• Business Forms: Used in all business functions, illustrating data flow, and providing insights concerning business organization.
• Reports: Provides information regarding current system, data needed, and system functions and features.
• Current Information System Description: Explains the details of a current system and its processes.
• Formal/Informal Systems: Formal systems are documented methods of operations, while informal systems refer to how things are actually done.

Contemporary Methods

• JAD (Joint Application Design): A structured, intensive requirements gathering technique with participants including users, analysts, managers, and a leader. The goal is to generate a detailed understanding of current and projected systems.

CASE Tools

• Role in JAD: Support JAD by displaying system models, screen designs, and prototypes to users and stakeholders throughout the JAD session.

Using Prototyping

• Iterative Development: Iterative approach in systems development, where requirements are converted to working prototypes, repeatedly refined. Close collaboration between analyst and users is essential.
• Evolutionary Prototyping: The prototype becomes the operational system basis.
• Throwaway Prototyping: Prototypes are models, not the final system and are discarded.

Using Prototyping (continued)

• Application Usefulness: Useful when user requests are unclear, few users are included in the system, the design is complex, or when there is a significant history of communication problems between analysts and users.

Radical Methods (e.g. Business Process Reengineering - BPR)

• BPR Focus: Identifying radical changes needed in business processes for significant improvements in products/services.
• Goal Identification: Identifying areas of business to radically reengineer, eliminate unnecessary steps, establish process synergy, and increase responsiveness to future changes.

Disruptive Technologies

• Improvement through IT: Applying information technologies to fundamentally enhance business processes.
• Breaking Traditional Rules: Using technology to disrupt current business methods and rules that may impede organizational progress, requiring radical changes.

Requirements Using Agile Methodologies (e.g. Continuous User Involvement, Agile Usage-Centered Design, The Planning Game)

• Continual User Involvement: Iterative analysis, design, code, and testing to replace traditional SDLC waterfall methods.
• Agile Usage-Centered Design: Focus on user goals, roles, and tasks, using an iterative approach that encompasses user interaction contexts and prototypes built throughout the process in response to user feedback.
• The Planning Game (eXtreme Programming): A practical method focused on working sessions with users that continuously review and adjust the plan collaboratively.

Electronic Commerce Applications (e.g., Pine Valley Furniture WebStore)

• System Requirements Focus: Details on WebStore, layout/navigation, site management functions, customer/inventory information, and the evolution of system prototypes.

Summary

• Chapter Summary: Focus on learning how to describe interview options, plan interviews, assess observation and document analysis, explain the use of computing, participant in JADE sessions, and determine approaches relevant for electronic commerce and other related practices such as prototyping.