Requirements Gathering and Elicitation
Build your team’s capability to capture requirements that hold up — running effective interviews and workshops, engaging stakeholders, and producing clear, testable, prioritized requirements. Over two days, participants practise elicitation and facilitation on realistic scenarios and leave with a requirements pack they have built.
- Plan a requirements approach for a piece of work.
- Run effective elicitation interviews and workshops.
- Engage stakeholders and reconcile differing or conflicting needs.
- Document requirements clearly and testably, separating need from solution.
This is a hands-on, facilitation-heavy course in getting requirements right. Participants practise interviews, workshops and documentation on realistic scenarios, learn to engage stakeholders and reconcile conflicting needs, and — crucially — to separate real need from proposed solution. The emphasis is on requirements that are clear, testable and prioritized, and on the requirements elicitation and facilitation skills that get them out of people’s heads and onto the page.
Right for your team if…
- Business analysts responsible for eliciting and documenting requirements.
- Product teams and product owners capturing what is needed.
- Project managers and SMEs who gather requirements as part of their role.
- Anyone who runs requirements interviews or workshops and wants to do it well.
What participants will be able to do
- Prioritise requirements and manage scope and trade-offs.
- Validate, baseline and manage change to requirements.
A tangible outcome they take back to work
A requirements pack for a scenario — an elicitation plan, a set of documented and prioritized requirements, and a validation approach.
What we cover
- Approach, sources, stakeholders and technique selection.
Build an elicitation approach covering sources, stakeholders, techniques and sequencing.
- Interviews, workshops, observation and document analysis; choosing techniques.
Run interview/observation/document-analysis exercises and select techniques.
- Planning and running workshops; handling difficult dynamics.
Plan and facilitate a structured workshop segment, including difficult dynamics.
- Clear, testable requirements; need versus solution; avoiding ambiguity.
Convert elicited information into clear, testable requirements.
- Applying an appropriate prioritization method; scope and trade-offs.
Prioritize requirements and make scope/trade-off decisions.
- Validation, sign-off and requirements change control.
Run a validation/change-control exercise.
How it runs
This is live, instructor-led private training for one organization. Live virtual delivery, with scheduling arranged around client requirements. Recommended cohort of up to eight participants. Facilitation-heavy, with role-play throughout; scenarios are adapted to the client’s context.
We adapt the agenda, pace, examples and exercises to the team's existing knowledge, roles and objectives. The proposal will state what adaptation is included and identify any substantial custom development separately.
Scope and progression
What this course focuses on
Eliciting, facilitating, documenting, prioritizing and validating requirements.
Reserved for other courses
- Agile user stories and acceptance-criteria depth (User Stories and Acceptance Criteria).
- Process-modeling depth (Process Mapping and Improvement).
- Change and stakeholder planning (Change Impact and Stakeholder Mapping).
- Certification technique.
Progression
Other courses in this pathway
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Benefits Realization and Adoption Planning
Connect intended business benefits to the behavior, adoption and evidence needed to realize them. Participants build a practical plan linking benefits to measures, owners, risks, review points and sustainment actions.
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Communication Planning for Change
Plan change communication around the people, messages and decisions that matter. Participants build a practical, legally neutral communication plan covering audiences, factual messages, channels, timing, ownership, feedback and escalation.
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Change Impact and Stakeholder Mapping
When change is coming, the people side decides whether it sticks. Over two days, PMO, transformation and change teams learn to assess how a change affects roles and work, map and engage stakeholders, surface adoption risks early, and build a practical, realistic adoption plan supported by proportionate change activities.
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User Stories and Acceptance Criteria
Turn understood needs into user stories and acceptance criteria that delivery teams can refine and test. Participants practice drafting, splitting and improving stories so developers, testers and stakeholders can work from a clearer definition of value and done.
Common questions
Do participants need Business Analysis Essentials first?
Recommended, not required. Many teams send experienced staff straight to this course.
Is it hands-on?
Very. Participants practise interviews and workshops through facilitated role-play on realistic scenarios.
Does it cover agile user stories?
At an awareness level. Deep user-story and acceptance-criteria work is a separate course (User Stories and Acceptance Criteria).
Can we use our own project as the scenario?
A client scenario can be used where it is suitable, secure and supplied in advance; substantial bespoke build is scoped separately.
Is this certification preparation?
No. It’s a skills-based course.
What do participants leave with?
A requirements pack they have built during the course.
Plan a cohort for your team
Tell us what your team needs to achieve. We will recommend the right course, cohort structure and schedule, then provide a clear private-training proposal.