A software model - the importance of a model in a software

In this tutorial, we will define what a software model is and what importance it holds in software? By Monika Sharma Last updated : April 05, 2023

What is a software model?

A software model describes all the important aspects of the software, hiding the rest of them. In other words, the software model represents only the useful and required aspects of any software and all the other aspects that are not much important to showcase are abstracted.

The software model is most of the time confused with software design, but both of them are two different things. The software design is a detailed representation of the entire software, but as already mentioned, the software model contains only the important things.

Also, the software model is created before the requirement analysis phase of the software while the software design is made after the analysis phase. It can be said that the software design is probably for the developers so that they can easily understand each requirement of the user and how it should be implemented inside the software. On the other hand, the software model is for the people who need to understand the software but not as deeply as the developers, as they are not meant for the developing purpose. An example of this can be investors.

Why do we need a software model?

A software model is a very useful tool in software development. Through the software model, the complexity of the entire software can be analyzed and also the strategy behind the development of the software can be estimated.

A software model once created is useful in every phase of the software development: from the ideation phase to the retirement phase. All the other phases that fall in between these two phases and in which the software model is termed useful are as follows:

Analysis phase (of the feasibility and the software requirements)
Specification phase
Designing phase
Visualizing and understanding of the design
Coding and implementation phase
Unit Testing phase (Done by the developer)
Integration phase (bringing all the modules together)
Sample testing phase (done by the tester)
And the software model is sometimes used as a reference in the maintenance phase also

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