Discovering and collecting requirements

The first step in the requirements life cycle is gathering. Elicitation is an implicit part of that. Before starting to vet, analyze, and ultimately document the requirements, you need to start the conversation and start ideas flowing.

To achieve this, you need to have the right people in the room. It may seem trivial, but often it is not clear who the source of requirements should be (for example, the business, a vague set of people including sales, executive management, project sponsors, and so on). Even if you manage to have those people onboard, who else is relevant for requirement collection?

There is no golden rule here, as it heavily depends on the project environment and team composition:

• You will need for sure some senior technical resources, usually lead architects. These people will help by giving initial high-level guidance on technical feasibility and ballpark effort estimations.
• Other useful participants are enterprise...