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CSC493: R04: Software Design1

Overview

You have created the requirements.md file that should have started to outline the requirements for your project.

This week’s new work will move from the planning and analysis phase to beginning to the design phase of the software project.

It is well understood by strong software developers that the functional elements of a program should not ever be allowed to become too large. If any component of a program grows beyond the size where it's readily comprehensible as a unit, it can too easily conceal errors. Thus, any software with large components is likely to be harder to read, harder to test, and harder to debug. The design process clarifies exactly how the developer plans to implement the design specifications, i.e. how the software is to be written, and with which small components. In particular, the main work of this first part of the design phase is to present an architectural model of the software components.

Documentation

You have some tasks to complete before next time:

  • Complete the Preliminary Software Requirements Specification (SRS) document that you have been working for a while now.
  • Create and complete a file called design.md.
  • Update README.md to link to the file you just created.

Create a new file called design.md.

Ultimately, the software architectural design must be:

  • a simplified description of the entire planned project system which abstracts the essentials and ignores the non-essentials;
  • defines the major software components (classes, methods, etc);
  • uses a hierarchical presentation which makes the system simple to understand;
  • shows the flow of control and data through the system;
  • is organized according to consistent conventions;
  • can be used for reasoning about the software system.

Any architectural software design which satisfies the above criteria may be used. Many software developers use schematic designs of the planned software components as part of their modeling description, but this is not required. It is acceptable to list the planned software components with brief descriptions as long as the control hierarchy and interactions among the components are also made clear.

Note: For next time, you only need to begin this work. You will be fleshing out more details in over the next week. So, feel free to use a very high level design for next time.

Update README.md

Open the README.md and insert an entry called "Design" that is linked to the design.md file.

README.md

  • Project name
  • Project Concept (linked to concept.md)
  • Project proposal
  • Vision
    Remember that the paragraph of your vision is here.
  • Scope
    Remember that the paragraph of your scope is here.
  • Prerequisites
  • Requirements (linked to requirements.md)
  • Design (linked to design.md)
  • Built With
  • Author name
  • Acknowledgments

To Submit

In addition to creating the design.md file, update README.md as necessary.

1. Adapted from https://github.com/pearcej/pearcej.github.io/edit/master/csc493/r04-design.md