As a business analyst, you are trained to be a problem solver. However, this attribute can become a liability during requirements elicitation, where your task is to uncover needs, not prescribe solutions.
Imagine a stakeholder tells you: “We need to be able to export our monthly sales reports to Excel.” Are you mentally sketching a UI, estimating development effort and wondering if CSV would be easier to implement? If so, you have just jumped into solution mode and risk missing the real requirement.
When someone tells you they want the fastest mode of transportation, a private jet could be a good option for travelling from Sydney to Melbourne, but it is not feasible and not as fast as a bike when moving around within the CBD. If you jump to solution mode straight away, you may miss the real requirement.
The solution mode trap affects both sides of the table. Stakeholders can also fall into this trap, as they may frame their requests around pre-packaged solutions based on how they currently use the relevant tools. As a business analyst, you need to also beware of such situations and be able to navigate away from it in an effective and respectful manner.
Here are some techniques you can use to make sure you don’t jump into solution mode:
1. Mind Mapping
Mind Mapping helps externalise the problem space visually and keeps the conversation expansive, which moves away from solution-mode thinking. You are exploring and connecting concepts rather than prescribing an outcome.
2. Five Whys
Five Whys can be very useful when you notice your stakeholder is the one who jumps to the solution mode. You ask successive ‘why’ questions to uncover the root cause or problem. IRM Training published a recent blog post that covers what is and how to use Five Whys.
3. As-Is (Current) to To-Be (Future) Process Modelling
Ensuring you understand the ‘as is’ or ‘current’ state and modelling the ‘to be’ or ‘future’ state as a process can act as a safeguard against solution mode.
4. Use Cases
Use cases are user-centric by design. They anchor requirements to what a user needs to accomplish rather than how a system should work, which can also help avoid jumping into solution mode. Here is a quick introduction to how to create Use Cases.
There are also other techniques and soft skills that you can utilise to ensure you elicit requirements effectively and efficiently. You can learn and practice these through these practical courses:
- Business Requirements Elicitation
- Workshop Facilitation Skills
- Business Analysis Accelerated
- Business Process Modelling
– Browse all Business Analyst Courses –
