The Balancing Act!

Software Engineering is actually the balancing act. You have to balance many things like cost, user friendliness, Efficiency, Reliability etc. You have to analyze which one is the more important feature for your software is it reliability, efficiency, user friendliness or something else. There is always a trade-off among all these requirements of a software. It may be the case that if you try to make it more user-friendly then the efficiency may suffer. And if you try to make it more cost-effective then reliability may suffer. Therefore there is always a trade-off between these characteristics of software.
 

These requirements may be conflicting. For example, there may be tension among the following:

• Cost vs. Efficiency
• Cost vs. Reliability
•  Efficiency vs. User-interface

A software engineer is required to analyze these conflicting entities and tries to strike a balance.