Software Requirements, by Karl Wiegers, sells over 100K copies!

Microsoft Press would like to congratulate our good friend Karl Wiegers for reaching a wonderful milestone in technical publishing: his Software Requirements has sold over 100,000 copies!

The reviews at Amazon help to explain why Karl’s book is so successful. 48 of 51 reviews are 4- or 5-starrers.

Not only does Karl describe nearly 50 requirements engineering best practices, categorizing them by both impact (high, medium, low) and difficulty (high, medium, low), he also tells numerous stories—all true—that illustrate typical requirements-related experiences.

It was once said that “Engineers would rather decipher the words to the Kingsmen’s 1963 classic party song ‘Louie Louie’ than decipher customer requirements” (Garry Peterson, 2002, “Risque Requirements,” CrossTalk). By offering dozens of tools to facilitate the communication required for software development, Karl’s book has helped developers and their customers hear and understand one another.

We’d also like to point you to Karl’s companion book, More About Software Requirements: Thorny Issues and Practical Advice. That book was written in direct response to questions Karl was repeatedly being asked as a requirements consultant that weren’t addressed by the best practices he shared in Software Requirements. Such as “We can’t get our customers to review the requirements specification. What should I do?” and “What are some good metrics our organization should collect about our requirements?”