Elicitation Competencies that Give the Most Bang for the Buck

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?

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Most people who are asked this question bet their money on Document Analysis, Interface Analysis, Interview, Prototyping and Requirements Workshops, although many flip a coin between Brainstorming and Interface Analysis.
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