Software Requirements
by Karl Eugene Wiegers, Joy Beatty · first published 1999
8mentions
2recommended by
6HN commenters
2008–2025first – last mentioned
33% recommend67% neutral
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…leading the narrative enough that I don't get hung out to dry. Engineering predictability and its communication is the key to all success. Something that has helped me wildly has been the Microsoft book Software Requirements (3rd Ed) [0]. The system it lays out for planning, analysis, and risk mitigation is something everyone should read if they want to be more effective. It doesn't even have to be applied dogmatically. If…
on “‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups” ↗…the only book I have is Just Enough Research by Erika Hall. I also found Essentials of Business Research Methods by Joe Hair Jr. et al. 2. Build the thing that the user wants. That's mostly the real of Software Requirements and I have two candidates for you: - Mastering the Requirements Process: Getting Requirements Right by Suzanne and James Robertson - Software Requirements by Karl Wiegers and Joy Beatty. 3. Build something…
on “Ask HN: What are the best books on talking to users?” ↗…to not only turn projects around but overdeliver in less time with happier people. EDIT: Also, shout out to Karl Wiegers Software Development 3rd Edition[0] and it's companion book Visual Models for Software Requirements[1]. Those books coupled with really learning to ask about peoples interests and needs and listen to not just what they are saying but watching to see if they are engaged changed my life and I think I've…
on “Programming Burnout” ↗My top priority books: Software Requirements - Karl Wiegers Programming TypeScript - Boris Cherny Associate Cloud Engineer Study - Dan Sullivan Design Patterns - Gang of Four Refactoring - Kent Beck, Martin Fowler Programming…
on “Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?” ↗…blocks and generate the visuals so you don't have to maintain/update two places. Any tool that does that? Also, integrating different level of complexity using system 1,2,3 (from https://www.amazon.ca/Software-Requirements-3rd-Karl-Wiegers...) to represent user flow diagram in addition to flow charts. Flow charts get confusing after some complexity. Useless if you want to represent multiple actors + messages. Systems/sub-systems…
on “Drakon: a visual language for specifications from the Russian space program” ↗…of Steve is way off base, because the methods he describes are not strawmen, but the actual methods described in most of the software engineering requirements books. If you look at Karl Wiegers book, Software Requirements, which is considered by many to be a leading reference on the subject, it describes a process much like the one Yegge criticizes.
on “Business Requirements are Bullshit” ↗“If you don’t get the requirements right, it doesn’t matter how well you execute the rest of the project.”—Karl Wiegers, Ten Cosmic Truths About Software Requirements Every word Karl writes is gold. That man knows more about Requirements Engineering than anyone and has made a career of helping Requirements Engineers become better.
on “Ask HN: How do I navigate horror of requirement gathering in product management?” ↗…working on some ways of visualizing our container systems, networks, roles, dependencies, and you know ... the whole ball of wax. It's for a specific app, but I'm going macro level. I found Karl Wiegers Software Requirements about eight years ago and have been evolving a high level model based off his visual model superset of UML and I've found it not quite to cover the complete roles of the container process. You've helped…
on “Containers Patterns” ↗