There are three key interactive methods that you can use to elicit human information requirements from organizational members.These three methods are interviewing, joint application design (JAD), and surveying people through questionnaires. Although different in their implementation, these methods have a great deal in common, too. The basis of their shared properties is talking with and… [Continue Reading]
Information Gathering: Interactive Methods
Interviewing in Information Gathering
Before you interview someone else, you must in effect interview yourself.You need to know your biases and how they will affect your perceptions.Your education, intellect, upbringing, emotions, and ethical framework all serve as powerful filters for what you will be hearing in your interviews. You need to think through the interview thoroughly before you go…. [Continue Reading]
Five Steps in Interview Preparation
The five major steps in interview preparation are explained below. These steps include a range of activities from gathering basic background material to deciding who to interview. Read Background Material Read and understand as much background information about the interviewees and their organization as possible. This material can often be obtained on the corporate Web… [Continue Reading]
Open-Ended and Closed Type Interview Questions
Open-ended Questions Open-ended questions include those such as “What do you think about putting all the managers on an intranet?” “Please explain how you make a scheduling decision.” “In what ways does the system extend your capability to do tasks that would not be possible otherwise?” Consider the term open-ended. “Open” actually describes the interviewee’s… [Continue Reading]
Arranging Interview Questions in a Logical Sequence
Just as there are two generally recognized ways of reasoning—inductive and deductive—there are two similar ways of organizing your interviews. A third way combines both inductive and deductive patterns. Using a Pyramid Structure Inductive organization of interview questions can be visualized as having a pyramid shape. Using this form, the interviewer begins with very detailed,… [Continue Reading]
Joint Application Design (JAD) in Information Gathering
No matter how adept you become as an interviewer, you will inevitably experience situations in which one-on-one interviews do not seem to be as useful as you would like. Personal interviews are time consuming and subject to error, and their data are prone to misinterpretation. An alternative approach to interviewing users one by one, called… [Continue Reading]
Using Questionnaires in Information Gathering
The use of questionnaires is an information-gathering technique that allows systems analysts to study attitudes, beliefs, behavior, and characteristics of several key people in the organization who may be affected by the current and proposed systems. Attitudes are what people in the organization say they want (in a new system, for instance); beliefs are what… [Continue Reading]
Writing Questions for Questionnaires
The biggest difference between the questions used for most interviews and those used on questionnaires is that interviewing permits interaction between the questions and their meanings. In an interview the analyst has an opportunity to refine a question, define a muddy term, change the course of questioning, respond to a puzzled look, and generally control… [Continue Reading]
Using Scales in Questionnaires
Scaling is the process of assigning numbers or other symbols to an attribute or characteristic for the purpose of measuring that attribute or characteristic. Scales are often arbitrary and may not be unique. For example, temperature is measured in a number of ways; the two most common are the Fahrenheit scale (where water freezes at… [Continue Reading]
Designing and Administering the Questionnaires
Designing the Questionnaires Many of the same principles that are relevant to the design of forms for data input (as covered in Chapter 12) are important here as well. Although the intent of the questionnaire is to gather information on attitudes, beliefs, behavior, and characteristics whose impact may substantially alter users’ work, respondents are not… [Continue Reading]
