BMAD-METHOD/.claude/data/elicitation-methods.md

Advanced Elicitation Methods for Enterprise Development

Core Reflective Methods

Expand or Contract for Audience

Purpose: Tailor content complexity for specific stakeholders

• Ask whether to 'expand' (add detail, elaborate) or 'contract' (simplify, clarify)
• Identify specific target audience: executives, developers, users, compliance
• Adjust technical depth and terminology accordingly
• Ensure appropriate level of detail for decision-making needs

Explain Reasoning (Chain of Thought)

Purpose: Make decision processes transparent and reviewable

• Walk through step-by-step thinking process from agent's perspective
• Reveal underlying assumptions and decision points
• Show how conclusions were reached using domain expertise
• Enable others to follow and validate the reasoning

Critique and Refine

Purpose: Improve quality through systematic review

• Review output for flaws, inconsistencies, or improvement areas
• Identify specific weaknesses from role's expertise perspective
• Suggest refined version incorporating domain knowledge
• Apply quality standards and best practices

Structural Analysis Methods

Analyze Logical Flow and Dependencies

Purpose: Ensure coherent and implementable solutions

• Examine content structure for logical progression
• Check internal consistency and coherence across sections
• Identify and validate dependencies between components
• Confirm effective ordering and sequencing of steps

Assess Alignment with Overall Goals

Purpose: Maintain strategic focus and business alignment

• Evaluate how content contributes to stated objectives
• Identify any misalignments or gaps in goal achievement
• Interpret alignment from specific role's perspective
• Suggest adjustments to better serve business outcomes

Risk and Challenge Methods

Identify Potential Risks and Unforeseen Issues

Purpose: Proactive risk management and mitigation planning

• Brainstorm potential risks from role's specific expertise
• Identify overlooked edge cases or failure scenarios
• Anticipate unintended consequences of proposed solutions
• Highlight implementation challenges and complexity issues

Challenge from Critical Perspective

Purpose: Stress-test solutions through adversarial thinking

• Adopt critical stance on current content and proposals
• Play devil's advocate from specified stakeholder viewpoint
• Argue against proposal highlighting significant weaknesses
• Apply YAGNI principles for scope trimming when appropriate

Creative Exploration Methods

Tree of Thoughts Deep Dive

Purpose: Systematic exploration of solution alternatives

• Break problem into discrete "thoughts" or intermediate steps
• Explore multiple reasoning paths simultaneously
• Use self-evaluation to classify each path: "confident", "likely", "uncertain"
• Apply search algorithms (breadth-first/depth-first) for optimal solutions

Hindsight Analysis: "If Only..." Reflection

Purpose: Learn from potential future scenarios

• Imagine retrospective scenario based on current content
• Identify the critical "if only we had known/done X..." insight
• Describe imagined consequences and their impact
• Extract actionable learnings for current context and planning

Multi-Perspective Collaboration Methods

Agile Team Perspective Shift

Purpose: Comprehensive evaluation from all team viewpoints

• Product Owner: Focus on user value and business impact assessment
• Scrum Master: Examine process flow and team dynamics concerns
• Developer: Assess technical implementation complexity and feasibility
• QA: Identify testing scenarios and quality assurance concerns
• UX Designer: Evaluate user experience and accessibility implications

Stakeholder Round Table

Purpose: Balanced consideration of all stakeholder interests

• Convene virtual meeting with multiple persona perspectives
• Each persona contributes unique viewpoint on content impact
• Identify conflicts and synergies between different viewpoints
• Synthesize insights into actionable recommendations and compromises

Meta-Analysis of Approach

Purpose: Optimize the problem-solving methodology itself

• Step back to analyze structure and logic of current approach
• Question the format and methodology being used for the task
• Suggest alternative frameworks or mental models that might work better
• Optimize the elicitation and analysis process itself

Advanced Enterprise Techniques

Self-Consistency Validation

Purpose: Increase reliability through multiple validation paths

• Generate multiple reasoning paths for the same problem
• Compare consistency across different analytical approaches
• Identify most reliable and robust solution among alternatives
• Highlight areas where approaches diverge and investigate why

Reasoning Without External Dependencies

Purpose: Efficient problem-solving using available knowledge

• Separate pure reasoning from tool-based or external research actions
• Create reasoning plan without external dependencies or data needs
• Identify what can be solved through existing knowledge and logic
• Optimize for efficiency and reduced complexity

Persona-Pattern Hybrid Analysis

Purpose: Deep domain-specific analysis with structured methodology

• Architect + Risk Analysis: Deep technical risk assessment with mitigation
• UX Expert + User Journey: End-to-end experience critique and optimization
• PM + Stakeholder Analysis: Multi-perspective impact review and prioritization
• QA + Test Strategy: Comprehensive quality assurance planning and validation

Emergent Collaboration Discovery

Purpose: Capture unexpected insights from multi-agent thinking

• Allow multiple perspectives to naturally emerge without forcing
• Identify unexpected insights from persona interactions and conflicts
• Explore novel combinations of viewpoints for innovative solutions
• Capture serendipitous discoveries from collaborative reasoning

Game-Based Elicitation Methods

Red Team vs Blue Team

Purpose: Adversarial testing of solutions and strategies

• Red Team: Attack the proposal, find vulnerabilities and weaknesses
• Blue Team: Defend and strengthen the approach with improvements
• Competitive analysis reveals blind spots and assumptions
• Results in more robust, battle-tested solutions

Innovation Tournament

Purpose: Systematic evaluation of alternative approaches

• Pit multiple alternative approaches against each other
• Score each approach across different evaluation criteria
• Crowd-source evaluation from different persona perspectives
• Identify winning combination of features and strategies

Constraint Challenge

Purpose: Creative problem-solving within limitations

• Present content as constraints to work within effectively
• Find creative solutions within tight budget/time/resource limitations
• Identify minimum viable approach that still meets core requirements
• Discover innovative workarounds and optimization opportunities

Quality Control Methods

Cross-Agent Validation

Purpose: Ensure consistency across different domain perspectives

• Have multiple agents review from their expertise perspectives
• Identify inconsistencies between different domain requirements
• Resolve conflicts through structured negotiation and compromise
• Ensure final solution satisfies all critical domain constraints

Iterative Refinement Protocol

Purpose: Systematic improvement through structured feedback cycles

• Present initial solution for structured feedback
• Apply feedback systematically with clear change tracking
• Re-evaluate improved solution against original criteria
• Continue refinement cycles until quality thresholds are met

Implementation Guidelines for Agents

Analyst Agent: Use perspective shifts, stakeholder analysis, risk identification PM Agent: Use alignment assessment, priority challenging, stakeholder round tables Architect Agent: Use technical risk analysis, constraint challenges, alternative exploration Developer Agent: Use implementation critique, dependency analysis, constraint solving UX Expert Agent: Use user perspective shifts, journey analysis, accessibility validation QA Agent: Use risk identification, scenario exploration, validation protocols

Process Control

Proceed Without Further Actions

Purpose: Efficient workflow control and decision finalization

• Acknowledge choice to finalize current work without additional analysis
• Accept output as-is and prepare to move to next workflow step
• Prepare to continue workflow without additional elicitation or refinement