Basic Software Design Report

A software design report should mainly answer "why" more than "how", because you might learn the "how" by looking at the code but not the "why". It should contain as a minimum the following:

• Definition of problem
• Why are you tackling this problem, where will the design be used?
• Where will the resulting software be integrated to?
• Sequence diagram of main flow
• Class diagram showing most important classes
• Constraints (time, memory, programming language due to platform to be integrated to etc.)
• Detailed description of inputs from outside and outputs to outside (definition, data type), i.e. API
• Explanation of non-trivial algorithms, selection reason of particular data structures, complexity analysis.
• Design principles:
• Modularity, how it will be achieved (observer pattern, bridge pattern etc.)
• Error handling and logging