The Art Of Software Development (part 2): Designing For Simplicity (
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In the first part of this article, you got a crash course in
requirements analysis. Now that you've figured out what your customer
needs, it's time to design it - easily the most challenging and creative
phase of the project cycle. Find out more, inside.In the first part of this article, I introduced you to the five phases
of a software development project, and spent some time on the first
phase, requirements analysis. I explained the importance of clearly
defining and understanding your customer's requirements before beginning
work, and showed you how to put together a professional requirements
document that would serve as the basis for future activity.
With that first phase out of the way, it's time to move on to what I
personally find to be the most challenging phase of any software
project: design. This is when you meditate on the requirements defined
previously and design the architecture of your application so that it
satisfies all of them, while simultaneously meeting the goals of
stability, security, performance and maintainability. Needless to say,
this isn't easy - but it will get your creative juices flowing. Keep
reading!
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