The Information Architecture Group (IAG) located in New Castle, Delaware, is one of the 28 founding members of the International Institute of Business Analysis, a heavy contributor to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge and a thought leader in requirements maturity best practices. In 2008, IAG conducted a survey of over 100 larger companies with development projects in excess of $250,000 where significant new functionality was delivered to the organization. The average project size was $3 million.

This 2008 benchmark concluded, “In absolute terms, the quality of requirements will dictate the time and cost of the solution.” Companies that have achieved “Excellence across 5 categories of elicitation competency” realize the greatest success rates.

The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge Ver. 2.0 (BABOK) defines 9 categories of elicitation competency. (Earlier versions of BABOK listed 10, but have since dropped reverse engineering) The 9 categories are (in alphabetical order):

Which 5 of these elicitation competency categories give the most bang for the buck?