Requirements18% of the exam
Eliciting, validating and prioritizing requirements
How a business analyst finds the right stakeholders, fills gaps and reconciles conflicts, checks each requirement is testable and traceable, confirms it with its owners, and facilitates a priority order the business agrees.
Engage stakeholders to identify, validate, and prioritize requirements.
~8 min read · 26 practice questions ·
What the exam expects
- Identify who must be consulted before requirements are trusted, and respond when a missing stakeholder appears late.
- Fill gaps and reconcile conflicting descriptions with further, targeted elicitation.
- Check that each requirement is testable, unambiguous, a single need, and traceable to an objective and an owner.
- Validate requirements by playing them back to stakeholders and recording the accountable approval.
- Facilitate prioritization by value, effort, risk, dependencies and mandatory obligations, with the business owning the order.
Key terms:
- Elicitation: drawing forth information from stakeholders or other sources; the main path to discovering requirements.
- Stakeholder: anyone who has an interest in, or may be affected by, the issue under consideration.
- Needs vs wants: essential requirements that must be included vs desired ones that can be negotiated out or deferred.
- Confirm elicitation results: validating that the stated requirements match the problem and the stakeholders' real intentions.
- Accountable (RACI): the person ultimately accountable for the outcome.
Key facts
Who is a stakeholder
- Detail
- Anyone with an interest in, or affected by, the issue; internal or external
Elicitation stages
- Detail
- Prepare, conduct, confirm results
Valid requirement
- Detail
- Quantifiable and verifiable; kept short and concise
Requirement owner
- Detail
- The stakeholder, not the BA who wrote it
Accountable in RACI
- Detail
- Person ultimately accountable for the outcome
Gap analysis document
- Detail
- Gaps between current and intended processes
Backlog priority owner
- Detail
- The product owner
Prioritization inputs
- Detail
- Business impact and implementation effort
Late scope additions
- Detail
- Schedule or cost must change, or the item is deferred
Sources for this section (6)
- Explore Techniques for Information Discoverytrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Become A Business Analysis Detectiveadmin.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Explore Documentation Typestrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Learn the Elements of the Scrum Workflowtrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Select and Prioritize Featurestrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Gather Requirementstrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Why run a stakeholder analysis before trusting a list compiled by one department?
- When can wants be dropped from a release?
- Who owns a requirement the BA wrote down?
- Which two dimensions does Salesforce suggest for ranking candidate features?
The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.
Keep reading with the Business Analyst pack
- Core concepts
- Exam traps
- Worked scenario
The pack includes:
- All 22 lessons of the Business Analyst guide, with reading progress
- Interactive decision walks and step-by-step sequence steppers
- Inline practice questions and one-click topic practice (26 questions for this lesson)
- An official source cited for every claim
- An AI tutor that answers from the guide
- Unlimited timed practice exams