Software is everywhere these days: phones, TVs, cars, vending machines, coffee makers, and pet toys all offer some software driven features. All of these products have been created by groups of people that have organized with the goal of making electronic signals behave in a desirable pattern. In short, software development is the overall process involved when taking a software project from conception to production delivery.

his process encompases the design, documentation, programming, testing and ongoing maintenance of a software deliverable. These various aspects are used to create a workflow pipeline, a sequence of steps that when followed produce high quality software deliverables. This pipeline is known as the Software Development Lifecycle.

The art of software development has many deep schools of thought. The following discussion is not a comprehensive guide, but a overview of the most recognized techniques. Software development today is generally executed with a complementary agile project management process. This process is in-effect during steps 3 and 4 from the Software Development Lifecycle.