Supportsoft Glossary

Principles of Software Engineering for Robust Systems

Software   is the application of engineering principles to create high-quality, reliable, scalable, secure, and efficient systems that will continue to operate effectively over time. Software engineers focus on developing solutions that not only meet the current requirements of their users but are also easy to maintain and provide consistent performance into the future.

Software engineering uses both technical knowledge and structured practices such as requirement analysis, architectural design, version control, software testing, and project management to create high-quality software.

Software engineers spend most of their time collaborating with product teams, designers, testers (QA), and operations people while using methodologies such as Agile, DevOps, and Test Driven Development (TDD) to enhance collaboration and reduce defects. Their guiding principles include modularity, reuse of software components, abstraction, documentation, and robust quality assurance.

As software systems become more complex, they will continue to grow in size and complexity and will require better methods to keep track of them (via cloud service integration), satisfy regulatory compliance (security), and maintain optimal performance. Software engineering provides methodologies and frameworks for developing systems that are functional at the point of launch but also will be easily maintained and able to recover from failure over the lifecycle of the software.