Software development is the translation of a user need or marketing goal into a software product. Software development is sometimes understood to encompass the processes of software engineering combined with the research and goals of software marketing to develop computer software products. This is in contrast to marketing software, which may or may not involve new product development.

It is often difficult to isolate whether engineering or marketing is more responsible for the success or failure of a software product to satisfy customer expectations. This is why it is important to understand both processes and/or facilitate collaboration between both engineering and marketing in the total software development process. Engineering and marketing concerns are often balanced in the role of a project manager that may or may not use that title.

Marketing involvement is also known as software requirements analysis. Because software development may involve compromising or going beyond what is required by the client, a software development project may stray into processes not usually associated with engineering such as market research, human resources, risk management, intellectual property, budgeting, crisis management, etc. These processes may also cause the role of business development to overlap with software development.