Editing Software design (section)

{{Short description|Process of planning software solutions}}

{{Software development process|Core activities}}

'''Software design''' is the process of conceptualizing how a [[software system]] will work before it is [[Implementation|implemented]] or modified.<ref>Ralph, P. and Wand, Y. (2009). A proposal for a formal definition of the design concept. In Lyytinen, K., Loucopoulos, P., [[John Mylopoulos|Mylopoulos, J.]], and Robinson, W., editors, Design Requirements Workshop (LNBIP 14), pp. 103–136. Springer-Verlag, p. 109 {{doi|10.1007/978-3-540-92966-6_6}}.</ref>
Software design also refers to the direct result of the design process {{endash}} the concepts of how the software will work which consists of both design documentation and undocumented concepts.

Software design usually is directed by [[goal]]s for the resulting system and involves problem-solving and planning {{endash}} including both 
high-level [[software architecture]] and low-level component and [[algorithm design]].

In terms of the [[Waterfall model|waterfall development process]], software design is the activity of following [[Software requirements|requirements specification]] and before [[Computer programming|coding]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Freeman|first=Peter|author2=David Hart |s2cid=14331332|title=A Science of design for software-intensive systems|journal=Communications of the ACM|year=2004|volume=47|issue=8|pages=19–21 [20]|doi=10.1145/1012037.1012054 }}</ref>