Separation of concerns (SoC) is a design principle in computer science and software engineering, it holds that a complex problem should be divided into distinct concerns -- aspects or issues -- that can be analyzed, addressed or managed individually, even when they belong to the same system. This allows focusing on one issue at a time, reducing cognitive load and complexity.

Separation of Concerns can be achieved in several ways: temporally (e.g., sequencing activities in a software lifecycle), by quality (e.g.,