Data Gathering

General technique · See it on the map

Guide only — An umbrella group; its members are the runnable ones.

The general term for methods that collect information a project does not already have.

When to use it

A process step needs input you don't have on hand and picking the right collection method for the audience and the question matters more than grabbing the first one that comes to mind.

When to avoid it

When the information already exists in project records, a prior report, or an expert's head and gathering it fresh would just duplicate work. Also avoid defaulting to the heaviest method (a formal survey) for a question a five-minute interview would answer just as well — the cost of the method should match the size of the decision.

Steps

1. State the specific question you need answered before choosing a method.
2. Match the method to the audience and the question: brainstorming for generating options with a group, interviews for depth with a few people, surveys for breadth across many, focus groups for reaction to something concrete, checklists for verifying against a known list, benchmarking for comparing against an external reference, market research for external conditions you don't control.
3. For a method with its own catalog entry — benchmarking, focus groups, or a structured interview — follow that entry's steps rather than improvising.
4. Collect from enough sources that one outlier answer can't dominate the result.
5. Record the raw responses before you summarize them, so the summary can be checked against what was actually said.

What it produces

• A raw data set, with its source and collection method noted.

Common pitfalls

• Choosing a method because it's familiar rather than because it fits the question — running a survey when three interviews would have surfaced the same information faster.
• Collecting from a convenience sample (whoever answered email first) and presenting it as representative.
• Skipping straight to a summary and losing the raw responses, so a later disagreement about what was said can't be resolved.
• Re-gathering data that already existed in a prior deliverable.

Worked example

A team scoping a new intake form needs to know which fields caseworkers actually use versus which they skip. Rather than a survey, the analyst runs four short interviews with caseworkers who use the current form daily, asks each the same set of questions, and writes up the raw answers before drafting the recommended field list.

Where it comes from: this technique is named by the PMBOK Guide, 6th edition. No clause number is recorded for it here — a guessed citation would be worse than none. An umbrella technique group PMBOK-6 names in many processes' ITTO tables across knowledge areas; its members carry the clause numbers, it does not.