Software Development

Software development (also known as Application Development; Software Design, Designing Software, Software Engineering, Software Application Development, Enterprise Application Development, and Platform Development) is the development of a software product in a planned and structured process. This software could be produced for a variety of purposes - the three most common purposes are to meet specific needs of a specific client/business, to meet a perceived need of some set of potential users (the case with commercial and open source software), or for personal use (e.g. a scientist may write software to automate a mundane task).

The term software development is often used to refer to the activity of computer programming, which is the process of writing and maintaining the source code, whereas the broader sense of the term includes all that is involved between the conceptions of the desired software through to the final manifestation of the software. Therefore, software development may include research, new development, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or any other activities that result in software products. For larger software systems, usually developed by a team of people, some form of process is typically followed to guide the stages of production of the software.

Especially the first phase in the software development process may involve many departments, including marketing, engineering, research and development and general management.

There are several different approaches to software development. We take a more structured, engineering-based approach to developing business solutions, as well as take a more incremental approach, where software evolves as it is developed piece-by-piece. Most methodologies share some combination of the following stages of software development:

These stages are often referred to collectively as the software development lifecycle, or SDLC.