What is Requirements Gathering?
Requirements gathering is the structured process of identifying and documenting what a project must achieve in order to be considered successful. It involves working with stakeholders to surface needs, expectations, constraints, and goals—so that they can be translated into clear requirements for the project team.
In higher education, where projects often involve diverse perspectives and decentralized decision-making, requirements gathering is essential to ensure that your scope, charter, and outcomes reflect what is actually needed—not just what is assumed.
What are the benefits of requirements gathering?
Taking the time to gather requirements early and thoroughly sets the foundation for project success. Benefits include:
- Improved Accuracy: Gathering requirements prevents misunderstandings or missed expectations by clarifying needs from the outset.
- Increased Buy-In: Involving stakeholders in the gather requirements process fosters ownership, trust, and engagement.
- Stronger Planning: You can design more realistic project schedules, resource allocations, and deliverables by engaging in gathering requirements.
- Reduced Risk: Gathering requirements helps to identify conflicting needs or constraints before they become roadblocks.
- Support for Change Management: Through gathering requirements you can help teams anticipate where support, communication, or training will be needed during implementation.
For example, a team developing a new academic advising model might conduct focus groups, surveys, and one-on-one interviews to gather requirements from advisors, students, IT staff, and academic leadership.
Where might you see requirements gathering in higher education?
Requirements gathering shows up across a range of academic and administrative projects, including:
- Technology implementations, such as new CRM, LMS, or degree audit systems
- Academic program planning, where student, faculty, and employer input shapes course offerings
- Policy or governance revisions, where broad consultation ensures policies meet campus needs
- Facilities planning, where usage data and user input inform design and function
- Grant-funded initiatives, where funder expectations must be translated into actionable requirements
A step-by-step guide to requirements gathering
- Before meeting with stakeholders, clarify what you’re trying to achieve and which aspects of the project you’re gathering requirements for. Refer to your charter for guidance.
- Use stakeholder identification and stakeholder analysis to ensure you’re engaging a broad and representative group—especially those impacted by the outcome.
- Choose tools that fit your context and timeline, such as:
- Interviews
- Focus groups
- Surveys or questionnaires
- Document review
- Observation or shadowing
- User testing or demos (especially for tech)
- Ask open-ended questions. Prompt stakeholders to describe what success looks like, what isn’t working now, and what they would need in the future.
- Record requirements using consistent language. Include context, rationale, and priority levels whenever possible.
- Share a summary of gathered requirements with key stakeholders. Look for alignment, flag conflicting needs, and identify “must-have” vs. “nice-to-have” elements.
- Use gathered requirements to inform your scope, resource management plan, and communication plan. Track them throughout the project lifecycle.
Reflective questions
- How do you currently gather requirements at the start of a project?
- What’s one technique (e.g., interviews, surveys, shadowing) you haven’t tried but could explore?
- How do you ensure that you’ve included all relevant voices in your requirements process?
- Where in your past work has missing or vague requirements created challenges?
- How can clearer requirements help your team manage expectations and reduce scope creep?