Briefing System Requirements
One-on-one interview with the client is the best option.
If the client wants a system to send email marketing for example, you have to visually design on your head the diagrams that represent all the elements of an email marketing system. If you don't know these elements, you will have to interpret them.
You will have to learn to "read in between the line" when talking to the client in order to understand what they need in IT terms.
Most of the time the analyst will be hired by someone with no idea of the technical terms used by the programmers, and programmers wont't know administration and management jargons either. The analyst is the translator! He or she needs to know management talk and at the same time be able to transform that talk into computer language.
The challenge is to keep it simple.
Interviewing the client
When you interview your client for the first briefing you will hear them say the works "just" and "only" about a thousand times. "I just one this system to do the accounting for me..." - just the accounting? Do you mean integrating all your services and databases, with an easy to use interface, to perform complicated and ever-changing accountancy calculations in order to invoice clients and generate dynamic spreadsheet reports that are always compliant to your market's legal specifications? Do you want the computer to make you some coffee as well? Everything is possible, but I bet your client doesn't have that much money to spend...
As a system analyst you need to listen "between the lines" and ask the right questions.
Accounting system? Do you want this program to generate the invoices on PDF format? Do you have a up-to-date database of clients and their account transactions? Do you need a CSV report to send to your accountant? (Because the job of an accountant will never be substituted by a computer. Ever!)
Sometimes you will have to turn your back on the client and go after the people who will actually use the system. Managing directors don't necessarily know how their employees do the work, they just follow the results and make sure of the legality of actions. But that isn't good enough for you as a project manager, you need to build the step-by-steps, document the system's walkthrough, and make sure the user understands error messages and warnings.
