Gathering Requirements in the 1990's

I worked as a business analyst on a large project in Australia in the early 1990's.   I recall being given a PC, replete with Windows, MS Word, Excel and email.    Our project had document templates for every deliverable.   At first I struggled to learn the Windows environment while trying to complete project deliverables at the same time. 

Again, projects were very "data" oriented.   The database design was quickly done first, integrating various "views" of the data provided by users.   These "views" (existing screen snapshots, report layouts, transaction layouts, etc.) were normalized into third normal form and then integrated into an overall project data model. 

Requirements were essentially paragraphs of information describing various "features" of the system:  an interface, a page layout, a report, etc.    The requirement document (usually called a "functional specification") included a data model that describes the limited view of the data that the feature used. 

Towards the late 1990's I started hearing about "use cases".   This was primarily considered a "web-oriented" technique.   A few people were experimenting around with it, however it was not widespread.   It wasn't until 2001 that I'd start working with use cases and requirement statements in a serious way.