Requirements analysis and use cases

Question

I’m doing some online self-studies and I would appreciate some help with a problem found online:

Case: A customer needs a popup survey in their shop cart to collect feedback

To do:

what are some questions, 4 examples, you would ask to create the requirements?
How would you describe the minimum list of use cases for such a development ( default state, customization, events, reporting)? In this case what default state, customization, events, reporting mean? I haven’t seen types of use cases referred to as this online?
What are some ways through which merchants can be integrated with a platform except APIs? Im correct in saying webhooks or these are the same thing?

This is a problem i found online and i cant seem to solve it...just some examples ould be good — user3529643, Mar 29 '20 at 17:23
I think that was the point of the problem also, just to answer that show the thinking way, approach, not to provide an accurate solution. — user3529643, Mar 29 '20 at 17:28
For this kind of questions, it would be useful to share what you have tried. If you didn’t try anything, reading the solution will not help you to learn. If you did try to answer but don’t tell, you will not understand what was wrong. — Christophe, May 10 '20 at 11:44

Tomas Michel · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-11T17:33:56.977

Making a clear separation between functional and technical constraints and scenarios is important.

You have your use case: functional requirement will aim at describing scenarios and behaviour that your costumer would like to see displayed. How to proceed, how to integrate survey data (or the API point that you mentioned at the very end) are all constraints and technical scenarios, and shall be expressed distinctly (for a wide variety of reasons such as XY problem https://www.perlmonks.org/?node=XY+Problem).

Here are some questions that could be asked to better describe the requirements:

What is the goal of collecting feedback ? What is the specific purpose ? Is feedback or user behaviour collected in any other way (such as website heatmaps or behaviour analytics tools) ? If so would the survey results need to be coupled to data collected though these means ? What information not brought by these tools are we aiming to collect through the survey ?
Who, what, when are all relevant questions: should it be for first visitors for all visitors ?
User journey Mapping: You seem to indicate that feedback is collected on a e commerce website, asking when the survey will pop-up during the user journey will prove informative. When should feedback collected, at which part of the user journey ? When the first item is added to the shop cart ? Yes ? No ? If so, why ? After payment ? Yes ? No ?
Are some users registering on the site with their account ? Should survey and treatment be different for such type of users ? Should specific type of users be pre-defined and addressed differently ?
Could the survey be administered via mail for costumers or visitors who already shared their mail ?
Should questions order vary ?
What should be the survey duration ?
Should the popup appearance vary in order to test the response rate variations ?
Should the popup appear each times the user navigate in various pages ?

Besides interviewing the client, creating mock up can be a stimulating way to elicit requirements.

Regarding process and modelling having more elements would be usefull to provide you with a better answer.

Various level of details and abstractions exist:

The The American Society for Quality defines flowchart as "a picture of the separate steps of a process in sequential order. (...) It's a common process analysis tool and one of the seven basic quality tools."

Regarding more IT orietned source, ITIL or TOGAF provides perspectives.

Finally, the notion user journey, traditionally more strongly perceived as a going hand in hand with agile approaches, is also worth looking at.

Thanks. This makes sense, i was alao thinking in the line of who, why, when, what questions....the next 2 points actually dont make much sense for me..could you alao provide some insights? How would you describe the minimum list of use cases for such a development ( default state, customization, events, reporting)? In this case what default state, customization, events, reporting mean? I haven’t seen types of use cases referred to as this online? — user3529643, Mar 29 '20 at 17:59
I am not entirely sure of what is meant by the question. To rephrase this "Functional requirements capture the intended behavior of the system. This behavior may be expressed as services, tasks or functions the system is required to perform. A use case defines a goal-oriented set of interactions between external actors and the system under consideration." You can have more information here for example: http://www.bredemeyer.com/pdf_files/functreq.pdf Given various uses case, you shall deduce your functional requirements. — Tomas Michel, Mar 29 '20 at 19:22
yes for me wasn't clear also what is meaning by "minimum list of use cases" and also the words "Default state, customization, events, reporting" what would they mean in this context. The 2nd point also is a question "Create an activity diagram describing the flow"..which flow is this? user views shopping cart, gets survey, answers or not, finishes payment? it's not very clear what this Q also is reffering to — user3529643, Mar 29 '20 at 19:37
Yes I think that this could refer to that. May be a process or a UML flow ? You could think of representing the process functional, just referring to the actions taken by the users, then a bit deeper on what is happening at more technical level. I have added various element on process modelling or user journey in my answer. — Tomas Michel, Apr 11 '20 at 17:27

Requirements analysis and use cases

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