Hi Everyone,

In my current project I want to intorduce a practice of recording the requirement gathering and JAD sessions with the client. The reason of doing this is that many times we are not able to document everything and small details get missed out. Later while documenting we realise that something is missing and then things are stuck and cause delays.

Can somebody guide me if this makes sense and should I go ahead with this and are there any tools available to record these long sessions.

Thanks in anticipation

Priyanka

Hi Priyanka,

If you're looking to record a session, either with video or audio only, you must remember the amount of time that will be required to go through this information in detail after the session and determine if you have sufficient resources to be able to properly leverage the additional information you will gather.  If you have a 3 hour session for example, you will probably need at least 6 hours to go through the 3 hour recording and find any nuggest of information that you missed.  This can be a time consuming exercise, and depending on the individual's resilience you may still miss those critical pieces of information as going through a recording is not exactly the most stimulating task.

I would suggest a couple of alternative ideas that will help improve your capturing of small pieces of information:

• Have at least 2 BAs in the room - this is not always possible but is an excellent way to ensure that information is not missed.  At any given point, one person should be the facilitator and the other the scribe.  It is the scribe's duty to stop the conversation in order to ensure that information is properly recorded.  This will either increase the length of your session or decrease the amount of detail covered in a session, but really helps to ensure that fewer details are missed.  If 2 BAs are not possible, try and convince someone else to be the scribe, even if it's one of the participants.  If you're trying to do everything yourself (faciltate and document), you're more likely to miss details.
• Allow for follow up - if you have a lot of ground to cover in a session, actively use a parking lot not only for out-of-scope details,  but also for things that you will want to follow up with specific people or groups after the session is over.  Take the time to write down the specifics that you want to cover with those people so you don't forget what detail you're trying to capture at a later date.  This keeps the session moving slowly but increases your overall capturing of information.
• Publish documentation after the session - this will allow the participants to catch missed details after the fact, and also encourages and reinforces that stakeholders are actively involved in the development process (as they should be).  If it's a large volume of information, considering breaking it up into smaller pieces and possibly sending only subsections to certain participants so they don't feel overwhelmed.

I've found that these options are a more time-effective way to catch additional details as opposed to reviewing a lengthy recording after the fact.  Hope this helps!

Hi:

I record requirements gathering session as often as needed.  Why not?  Nobody has a mind "like a steel trap" for all the details.  Indeed, I find that I generally need to approach requirements gathering from as high of a level of abstraction as possible (else, it is too easy to "drown in an ocean of detail").  And, when a BA is working to a high level of abastraction, details will often be missed.  

Tony