This is a list of approaches, styles, methodologies, philosophies in software development and engineering. It also contains

programming paradigm Programming paradigms are a way to classify programming languages based on their features. Languages can be classified into multiple paradigms. Some paradigms are concerned mainly with implications for the execution model of the language, suc ...

software development methodologies In software engineering, a software development process is a process of dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or sequential steps or sub-processes to improve design, product management. It is also known as a software devel ...

software development process In software engineering, a software development process is a process of dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or sequential steps or sub-processes to improve design, product management. It is also known as a software devel ...

es, and single practices, principles and laws. Some of the mentioned methods are more relevant to a specific field than another, such as automotive or aerospace. The trend towards agile methods in software engineering is noticeable, however the need for improved studies on the subject is also paramount. Also note that some of the methods listed might be newer ''or'' older ''or'' still in use ''or'' out-dated, and the research on software design methods is not new and on-going.

Software development methodologies, guidelines, strategies

Large-scale programming styles

Behavior-driven development In software engineering, behavior-driven development (BDD) is an agile software development process that encourages collaboration among developers, quality assurance experts, and customer representatives in a software project. It encourages teams ...

* Design-driven development *

Domain-driven design Domain-driven design (DDD) is a major software design approach, focusing on modeling software to match a domain according to input from that domain's experts. Under domain-driven design, the structure and language of software code (class name ...

Secure by design Secure by design, in software engineering, means that software products and capabilities have been designed to be foundationally secure. Alternate security strategies, tactics and patterns are considered at the beginning of a software design, ...

Test-driven development Test-driven development (TDD) is a software development process relying on software requirements being converted to test cases before software is fully developed, and tracking all software development by repeatedly testing the software against al ...

** Acceptance test-driven development **

Continuous test-driven development Continuous test-driven development (CTDD)Madeyski, L. and Kawalerowicz, M. ''Continuous Test-Driven Development - A Novel Agile Software Development Practice and Supporting Tool'', Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Evaluation of No ...

Specification by example Specification by example (SBE) is a collaborative approach to defining requirements and business-oriented functional tests for software products based on capturing and illustrating requirements using realistic examples instead of abstract statemen ...

* Data-driven development * Data-oriented design

Specification-related paradigms

Iterative and incremental development Iterative and incremental development is any combination of both iterative design or iterative method and incremental build model for development. Usage of the term began in software development, with a long-standing combination of the two terms ' ...

Waterfall model The waterfall model is a breakdown of project activities into linear sequential phases, meaning they are passed down onto each other, where each phase depends on the deliverables of the previous one and corresponds to a specialization of tasks. ...

Formal methods In computer science, formal methods are mathematically rigorous techniques for the specification, development, and verification of software and hardware systems. The use of formal methods for software and hardware design is motivated by the expec ...

Comprehensive systems

Agile software development In software development, agile (sometimes written Agile) practices include requirements discovery and solutions improvement through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams with their customer(s)/ end user(s), ad ...

Lean software development Lean software development is a translation of lean manufacturing principles and practices to the software development domain. Adapted from the Toyota Production System, it is emerging with the support of a pro-lean subculture within the agil ...

Lightweight methodology A lightweight methodology is a software development method that has only a few rules and practices, or only ones that are easy to follow. In contrast, a complex method with many rules is considered a "heavyweight methodology". Examples of lightw ...

Adaptive software development Adaptive software development (ASD) is a software development process that grew out of the work by Jim Highsmith and Sam Bayer on rapid application development (RAD). It embodies the principle that continuous adaptation of the process to the work a ...

Extreme programming Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development,"Human Centred Technology Workshop 2006 ", 2006, PD ...

Feature-driven development Feature-driven development (FDD) is an iterative and incremental software development process. It is a lightweight or Agile method for developing software. FDD blends a number of industry-recognized best practices into a cohesive whole. These pr ...

ICONIX ICONIX is a software development methodology which predates both the Rational Unified Process (RUP), Extreme Programming (XP) and Agile software development. Like RUP, the ICONIX process is UML Use Case driven but more lightweight than RUP. ICONI ...

Kanban (development) Kanban ( Japanese: , meaning signboard or billboard) is a lean method to manage and improve work across human systems. This approach aims to manage work by balancing demands with available capacity, and by improving the handling of system-le ...

Unified Process The Unified Software Development Process or Unified Process is an iterative and incremental software development process framework. The best-known and extensively documented refinement of the Unified Process is the Rational Unified Process (RU ...

Rational Unified Process The Rational Unified Process (RUP) is an iterative software development process framework created by the Rational Software Corporation, a division of IBM since 2003. RUP is not a single concrete prescriptive process, but rather an adaptable proce ...

OpenUP The Open Unified Process (OpenUP) is a part of the Eclipse Process Framework (EPF), an open source process framework developed within the Eclipse Foundation. Its goals are to make it easy to adopt the core of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) / U ...

Agile Unified Process Agile Unified Process (AUP) is a simplified version of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) developed by Scott Ambler. It describes a simple, easy to understand approach to developing business application software using agile techniques and concepts ...

Rules of thumb, laws, guidelines and principles

300 Rules of Thumb and Nuggets of Wisdom
(excerpt from ''Managing the Unmanageable - Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams'' by Mickey W. Mantle, Ron Lichty) *Karpov'
42 Ultimate Question of Programming, Refactoring, and Everything
*

Big ball of mud An anti-pattern in software engineering, project management, and business processes is a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive. The term, coined in 1995 by computer programmer An ...

Brooks's law Brooks' law is an observation about software project management according to which adding manpower to software project that is behind schedule delays it even longer.Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. '' The Mythical Man-Month''. 1995 975 Addison-Wesley. It ...

*C++ Core Guidelines (Stroustrup/Sutter) ''P1 - P13'' Philosophy rules *

Code reuse In software development (and computer programming in general), code reuse, also called software reuse, is the use of existing software, or software knowledge, to build new software, following the reusability principles. Code reuse may be achiev ...

Command–query separation Command-query separation (CQS) is a principle of imperative computer programming. It was devised by Bertrand Meyer as part of his pioneering work on the Eiffel programming language. It states that every method should either be a ''command'' tha ...

(CQS) *

Cowboy coding Cowboy coding is software development where programmers have autonomy over the development process. This includes control of the project's schedule, languages, algorithms, tools, frameworks and coding style. Typically, little to no coordination ...

* Do what I mean (DWIM) *

Don't repeat yourself "Don't repeat yourself" (DRY) is a principle of software development aimed at reducing repetition of software patterns, replacing it with abstractions or using data normalization to avoid redundancy. The DRY principle is stated as "Every piece o ...

(DRY) *

Egoless programming Egoless programming is a style of computer programming in which personal factors are minimized so that quality may be improved. The cooperative methods suggested are similar to those used by other collective ventures such as Wikipedia. History Th ...

Fail-fast In systems design, a fail-fast system is one which immediately reports at its interface any condition that is likely to indicate a failure. Fail-fast systems are usually designed to stop normal operation rather than attempt to continue a possibly f ...

* Gall's law * General Responsibility Assignment Software Patterns (GRASP) * If it ain't broke, don't fix it * Inheritance (OOP) *

KISS principle KISS, an acronym for "Keep it simple, stupid!", is a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960. First seen partly in American English by at least 1938, the KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather tha ...

Law of Demeter The Law of Demeter (LoD) or principle of least knowledge is a design guideline for developing software, particularly object-oriented programs. In its general form, the LoD is a specific case of loose coupling. The guideline was proposed by Ian Hol ...

, also known as the ''principle of least knowledge'' * Law of conservation of complexity, also known as Tesler's Law * Lehman's laws of software evolution *

Loose coupling In computing and systems design, a loosely coupled system is one # in which components are weakly associated (have breakable relationships) with each other, and thus changes in one component least affect existence or performance of another comp ...

Minimalism (computing) In computing, minimalism refers to the application of minimalist philosophies and principles in the design and use of hardware and software. Minimalism, in this sense, means designing systems that use the least hardware and software resources p ...

* Ninety–ninety rule *

Open–closed principle In object-oriented programming, the open–closed principle (OCP) states "''software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for extension, but closed for modification''"; that is, such an entity can allow its behaviour to be ...

Package principles In computer programming, package principles are a way of organizing classes in larger systems to make them more organized and manageable. They aid in understanding which classes should go into which packages (package cohesion) and how these packages ...

Pareto principle The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the "vital few"). Other names for this principle are the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity. Manage ...

* Parkinson's law *

Principle of least astonishment The principle of least astonishment (POLA), aka principle of least surprise (alternatively a law or rule), applies to user interface and software design. It proposes that a component of a system should behave in a way that most users will expect it ...

(POLA) *

Release early, release often Release early, release often (also known as ship early, ship often, or time-based releases, and sometimes abbreviated RERO) is a software development philosophy that emphasizes the importance of early and frequent releases in creating a tight feed ...

* Robustness principle, also known as Postel's law *

Rule of least power In programming, the rule of least power is a design principle that "suggests choosing the least powerful omputerlanguage suitable for a given purpose". Stated alternatively, given a choice among computer languages, classes of which range from ...

Separation of concerns In computer science, separation of concerns is a design principle for separating a computer program into distinct sections. Each section addresses a separate '' concern'', a set of information that affects the code of a computer program. A concern ...

Separation of mechanism and policy The separation of mechanism and policy is a design principle in computer science. It states that mechanisms (those parts of a system implementation that control the authorization of operations and the allocation of resources) should not dictate ( ...

Single source of truth In information science and information technology, single source of truth (SSOT) architecture, or single point of truth (SPOT) architecture, for information systems is the practice of structuring information models and associated data schemas su ...

(SSOT) *

Single version of the truth In computerized business management, single version of the truth (SVOT), is a technical concept describing the data warehousing ideal of having either a single centralised database, or at least a distributed synchronised database, which stores all ...

(SVOT) *

SOLID Solid is one of the State of matter#Four fundamental states, four fundamental states of matter (the others being liquid, gas, and Plasma (physics), plasma). The molecules in a solid are closely packed together and contain the least amount o ...

(object-oriented design) *

There's more than one way to do it There's more than one way to do it (TMTOWTDI or TIMTOWTDI, pronounced ''Tim Toady'') is a Perl programming motto. The language was designed with this idea in mind, in that it “doesn't try to tell the programmer how to program.” As proponents of ...

Uniform access principle The uniform access principle of computer programming was put forth by Bertrand Meyer (originally in ''Object-Oriented Software Construction''). It states "All services offered by a module should be available through a uniform notation, which does ...

Unix philosophy The Unix philosophy, originated by Ken Thompson, is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to minimalist, modular software development. It is based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system. Early Unix dev ...

Worse is better Worse is better (also called the New Jersey style) is a term conceived by Richard P. Gabriel in an essay of the same name to describe the dynamics of software acceptance. It refers to the argument that software quality does not necessarily increas ...

You aren't gonna need it "You aren't gonna need it" (YAGNI) is a principle which arose from extreme programming (XP) that states a programmer should not add functionality until deemed necessary. Other forms of the phrase include "You aren't going to need it" (YAGTNI) and ...

(YAGNI)

Other

* Davis 201 Principles of Software Development * ''Don't Make Me Think'' (Principles of intuitive navigation and information design) *

The Art of Computer Programming ''The Art of Computer Programming'' (''TAOCP'') is a comprehensive monograph written by the computer scientist Donald Knuth presenting programming algorithms and their analysis. Volumes 1–5 are intended to represent the central core of compu ...

(general computer-science masterpiece by

Donald E. Knuth Donald Ervin Knuth ( ; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer sc ...

) *

The Cathedral and the Bazaar ''The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary'' (abbreviated ''CatB'') is an essay, and later a book, by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux k ...

- book comparing top-down vs. bottom-up open-source software *The Philosophy of Computer Science *Where's the Theory for Software Engineering?

Programming paradigms

Agent-oriented programming Agent-oriented programming (AOP) is a programming paradigm where the construction of the software is centered on the concept of software agents. In contrast to object-oriented programming which has objects (providing methods with variable paramet ...

Aspect-oriented programming In computing, aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a programming paradigm that aims to increase modularity by allowing the separation of cross-cutting concerns. It does so by adding behavior to existing code (an advice) ''without'' modifying t ...

(AOP) *

Convention over configuration Convention over configuration (also known as coding by convention) is a software design paradigm used by software frameworks that attempts to decrease the number of decisions that a developer using the framework is required to make without necessa ...

Component-based software engineering Component-based software engineering (CBSE), also called component-based development (CBD), is a branch of software engineering that emphasizes the separation of concerns with respect to the wide-ranging functionality available throughout a give ...

Functional programming In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by Function application, applying and Function composition (computer science), composing Function (computer science), functions. It is a declar ...

(FP) * Hierarchical object-oriented design (HOOD) *

Literate programming Literate programming is a programming paradigm introduced in 1984 by Donald Knuth in which a computer program is given as an explanation of its logic in a natural language, such as English, interspersed (embedded) with snippets of macros and t ...

Logic programming Logic programming is a programming paradigm which is largely based on formal logic. Any program written in a logic programming language is a set of sentences in logical form, expressing facts and rules about some problem domain. Major logic prog ...

Modular programming Modular programming is a software design technique that emphasizes separating the functionality of a program into independent, interchangeable modules, such that each contains everything necessary to execute only one aspect of the desired function ...

Object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of pr ...

(OOP) *

Procedural programming Procedural programming is a programming paradigm, derived from imperative programming, based on the concept of the ''procedure call''. Procedures (a type of routine or subroutine) simply contain a series of computational steps to be carried ...

Reactive programming In computing, reactive programming is a declarative programming paradigm concerned with data streams and the propagation of change. With this paradigm, it's possible to express static (e.g., arrays) or dynamic (e.g., event emitters) data streams ...

Software development methodologies

(AUP) *

Constructionist design methodology {{short description, Aspect of system integration regarding artificial intelligence The core idea of Artificial Intelligence systems integration is making individual software components, such as speech synthesizers, interoperable with other componen ...

(CDM) *

Dynamic systems development method Dynamic systems development method (DSDM) is an agile project delivery framework, initially used as a software development method. First released in 1994, DSDM originally sought to provide some discipline to the rapid application development (R ...

(DSDM) *

(XP) *

Kanban Kanban (Japanese: カンバン and Chinese: 看板, meaning signboard or billboard) is a scheduling system for lean manufacturing (also called just-in-time manufacturing, abbreviated JIT). Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota, develope ...

* Model-based system engineering (MBSE) * Open Unified Process *

Pair programming Pair programming is an software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation. One, the ''driver'', writes code while the other, the ''observer'' or ''navigator'', reviews each line of code as it is typed in. The ...

Rapid application development Rapid application development (RAD), also called rapid application building (RAB), is both a general term for adaptive software development approaches, and the name for James Martin's method of rapid development. In general, RAD approaches to ...

(RAD) *

(RUP) *

Rubber duck debugging In software engineering, rubber duck debugging (or rubberducking) is a method of debugging code by articulating a problem in spoken or written natural language. The name is a reference to a story in the book '' The Pragmatic Programmer'' in which ...

Scrum Scrum may refer to: Sport * Scrum (rugby), a method of restarting play in rugby union and rugby league ** Scrum (rugby union), scrum in rugby union * Scrum, an offensive melee formation in Japanese game Bo-taoshi Media and popular culture * M ...

Structured systems analysis and design method Structuring, also known as smurfing in banking jargon, is the practice of executing financial transactions such as making bank deposits in a specific pattern, calculated to avoid triggering financial institutions to file reports required by law ...

(SSADM) *

(UP)

Software development processes

* Active-Admin-driven development (AADD) *

(BDD) * Bug-driven development (BgDD) * Configuration-driven development (CDD) * Readme-driven development (RDD) * Design-driven development (D3) *

(DDD) *

(FDD) *

(TDD) *

User-centered design User-centered design (UCD) or user-driven development (UDD) is a framework of process (not restricted to interfaces or technologies) in which usability goals, user characteristics, environment, tasks and workflow of a product, service or proce ...

(UCD) ( User-Driven Development (UDD)) * Value-driven design (VDD) *

Software review A software review is "a process or meeting during which a software product is examined by a project personnel, managers, users, customers, user representatives, or other interested parties for comment or approval".IEEE Std . 1028-1997, "IEEE Standa ...

Software quality assurance Software quality assurance (SQA) is a means and practice of monitoring all software engineering processes, methods, and work products to ensure compliance against defined standards. It may include ensuring conformance to standards or models, suc ...

Other materials, books, articles, etc.

* ''

Don't Make Me Think ''Don't Make Me Think'' is a book by Steve Krug about human–computer interaction and web usability. The book's premise is that a good software program or web site should let users accomplish their intended tasks as easily and directly as pos ...

'' (book by Steve Krug about

human computer interaction Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...

and

web usability Web usability of a website are broad goals of usability and presentation of information and choices in a clear and concise way, a lack of ambiguity and the placement of important items in appropriate areas as well as ensuring that the content work ...

)

References

{{Software engineering Software development process Methodology

Computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...