Agile SDLC Documentation for a Small Business Inventory, Expiry, and Waste Reduction Web Application

Document control, project overview, and business case

Document purpose

This document defines the complete Software Development Life Cycle for the StockGuard Inventory and Expiry Management Web Application. StockGuard is a browser-based application for small grocery stores, cafés, pharmacies, bakeries, convenience stores, and other businesses that manage products with limited shelf lives.

The document is the governing reference for project approval, requirements, design, implementation, verification, deployment, operation, maintenance, and closure. All approved requirements, risks, decisions, tests, releases, and changes must remain traceable to the identifiers defined here.

Document control

• Document ID: SG-SDLC-001
• Document owner: Product Owner
• Technical owner: Technical Lead
• Reviewers: Business Sponsor, Inventory Manager, UX Designer, Quality Assurance Engineer, Security Reviewer, and Operations Owner
• Final approver: Business Sponsor
• Review frequency: At the end of every sprint and before each production release
• Controlled repository: The approved project documentation directory in the source-control repository

Version history

• Version 0.1: Initial project charter and business requirements
• Version 0.5: Approved architecture, backlog, risks, and release plan
• Version 1.0: Baseline approved for the first production release
• Version 1.x: Controlled updates following approved product or operational changes

Business problem

Small businesses frequently track stock through notebooks, spreadsheets, receipts, or disconnected point-of-sale exports. These methods make it difficult to identify products approaching expiration, reconcile actual quantities, understand waste causes, and determine which products should be reordered, discounted, transferred, or removed.

The resulting business impact includes avoidable spoilage, expired items remaining available for sale, inaccurate purchasing decisions, lost revenue, excessive inventory carrying costs, and limited accountability for stock adjustments.

Proposed solution

StockGuard will provide a responsive web interface for recording products, inventory batches, expiration dates, stock movements, suppliers, waste events, alerts, and reports. Authorized users will be able to identify products that require action before they expire and measure waste trends over time.

Business objectives

• BO-01: Reduce the monetary value of expired or spoiled inventory by at least 20% within three months of adoption.
• BO-02: Ensure that at least 95% of tracked expiring batches receive an actionable warning before their expiration date.
• BO-03: Reduce the time required to complete a routine inventory review from approximately two hours to no more than 30 minutes.
• BO-04: Provide an auditable record for at least 99% of stock additions, deductions, adjustments, and waste events.
• BO-05: Give management a monthly report showing inventory value, expiring stock, expired stock, waste value, and primary waste reasons.

Success measures

• Active users complete at least 90% of daily expiry review tasks during the pilot.
• Inventory quantity discrepancies remain below 3% for products included in the pilot.
• No critical security, data-loss, or incorrect-expiry defects remain open at production release.
• At least 80% of pilot users rate the main inventory and expiry workflows as easy to use.
• The application meets the performance, availability, accessibility, backup, and recovery targets defined in the non-functional requirements.

Assumptions

• The initial deployment supports one business organization with one or more branches.
• Users have access to a modern browser and a stable internet connection.
• Product and supplier data may be entered manually or imported through a controlled comma-separated values file.
• The business will assign at least one product owner and one inventory subject-matter expert.

Constraints

• The first production release must be delivered within 12 weeks.
• The core team consists of one Product Owner, one UX Designer, two Developers, and one Quality Assurance Engineer.
• The system must be usable on desktop, tablet, and mobile browsers.
• The first release will not replace the business accounting or point-of-sale system.
• The application must minimize operational cost and avoid unnecessary infrastructure complexity.

Selected SDLC model and Agile governance

Selected model

Agile is the single SDLC model selected for StockGuard. Development will use two-week sprints, a prioritized product backlog, continuous stakeholder review, incremental verification, and controlled production releases.

Selection justification

• Project requirements: The core need is understood, but workflow details such as batch entry, expiry thresholds, alert grouping, and waste reporting require validation with actual store users.
• Uncertainty: Small businesses manage products differently. Agile allows the team to test assumptions through working increments rather than fixing every interaction before users see the product.
• Risk: The highest risks involve incorrect quantity calculations, missed expiration alerts, poor usability, and incomplete audit records. These can be addressed early through vertical product increments and repeated testing.
• Team: The compact cross-functional team can collaborate directly and make decisions within each sprint without extensive departmental handoffs.
• Timeline: A 12-week schedule requires usable capabilities to be developed, reviewed, and stabilized in parallel rather than waiting for one final integration phase.
• Compliance: The project is not initially subject to a specialized regulated-industry certification. However, privacy, access control, auditability, secure development, backup, and retention controls must be documented and verified in every increment.
• Stakeholder feedback: The Business Sponsor and Inventory Manager are available for backlog refinement, sprint reviews, user acceptance testing, and release decisions.
• Delivery constraints: The team must deliver a minimum viable production release while preserving the ability to defer lower-value reports and integrations without compromising core inventory integrity.

Why Agile fits the project

Agile enables the team to deliver the product as testable slices: authentication and product setup, batch inventory, stock movements, expiry alerts, waste recording, dashboards, and reports. Each slice includes requirements, design, implementation, tests, documentation, stakeholder review, and acceptance evidence.

Agile roles

• Business Sponsor: Owns funding, approves scope boundaries, resolves major escalations, and authorizes production release.
• Product Owner: Owns the product vision, backlog priority, acceptance criteria, stakeholder communication, and product acceptance.
• Scrum Facilitator: Performed by the Technical Lead; facilitates planning, reviews, retrospectives, impediment removal, and process compliance.
• Technical Lead: Owns architecture, engineering standards, technical decisions, security implementation, code review, and release readiness.
• Developers: Design, implement, review, document, and support the application.
• UX Designer: Produces user flows, wireframes, responsive layouts, design states, accessibility specifications, and usability findings.
• Quality Assurance Engineer: Owns the test strategy, test cases, regression suite, defect evidence, quality reporting, and release quality recommendation.
• Inventory Manager: Acts as the operational subject-matter expert and primary user acceptance representative.
• Operations Owner: Owns production monitoring, backup verification, incident coordination, support procedures, and operational acceptance.

Agile ceremonies and controls

• Backlog refinement: Weekly review of requirements, acceptance criteria, dependencies, risks, estimates, and readiness.
• Sprint planning: Selection of sprint objectives and backlog items that satisfy the Definition of Ready.
• Daily coordination: Brief review of progress, blockers, quality concerns, and dependencies.
• Sprint review: Demonstration of completed work against approved acceptance criteria.
• Sprint retrospective: Identification of process improvements with named owners and due dates.
• Release readiness review: Formal review of requirements coverage, open defects, security results, performance results, rollback readiness, operational documentation, and approvals.

Definition of Ready

A backlog item may enter a sprint only when it has a stable identifier, business value, clear description, acceptance criteria, user or system actor, known dependencies, test notes, design references when applicable, and an estimate accepted by the delivery team.

Definition of Done

A backlog item is complete only when implementation is reviewed, automated and manual tests pass, acceptance criteria are demonstrated, security and accessibility checks are completed where applicable, documentation is updated, traceability is recorded, no unresolved critical defects remain, and the Product Owner accepts the result.

Phase gates within Agile delivery

• Gate G1 — Initiation approval: Business case, scope, stakeholders, feasibility, initial risks, and project funding approved.
• Gate G2 — Delivery baseline: Architecture, prioritized backlog, release plan, environments, and quality strategy approved.
• Gate G3 — Minimum viable product readiness: Core workflows complete and ready for controlled user acceptance testing.
• Gate G4 — Production release approval: Quality, security, operations, deployment, rollback, and training evidence approved.
• Gate G5 — Closure approval: Success measures reviewed, ownership transferred, residual work recorded, and closure report accepted.

Scope, stakeholders, and feasibility assessment

Product scope

StockGuard will provide a secure browser-based inventory workspace for managing products by batch and expiration date. The initial production release is intended for small businesses that need better visibility into perishable or date-sensitive stock.

In-scope capabilities

• User authentication, password reset, sessions, and role-based access control
• Organization and branch configuration
• Product categories, units, suppliers, reorder levels, and default expiry-warning rules
• Batch-level inventory with received date, expiration date, quantity, unit cost, supplier, and branch
• Stock-in, stock-out, transfer, correction, return, and waste transactions
• First-expiring-first-out guidance when deducting stock
• Configurable expiry alerts for expired, urgent, warning, and safe inventory states
• Dashboard summaries for stock value, low stock, expiring batches, expired stock, and waste
• Waste recording with quantity, value, reason, notes, user, and timestamp
• Search, filtering, sorting, pagination, and controlled CSV import and export
• Inventory, expiry, movement, and waste reports
• Audit logs for security-sensitive and inventory-sensitive actions
• Responsive layouts, keyboard accessibility, and appropriate status messaging
• Monitoring, backup, recovery, support, maintenance, and operational documentation

Out-of-scope capabilities for the first release

• Native mobile applications
• Offline synchronization
• Automated purchasing or supplier order submission
• Integrated accounting, tax filing, payroll, or payment processing
• Direct point-of-sale integration
• Barcode hardware procurement
• Artificial intelligence demand forecasting
• Advanced warehouse routing or robotics
• Customer-facing online ordering

Primary stakeholders

• Business Sponsor: Requires measurable waste reduction, operational visibility, and controlled project cost.
• Business Owner or Manager: Requires trustworthy reports, branch visibility, and controlled access.
• Inventory Manager: Requires efficient product setup, stock review, expiry action, and reconciliation.
• Stock Clerk: Requires fast and understandable stock movement workflows.
• Branch Manager: Requires branch-specific alerts and waste accountability.
• Auditor or Reviewer: Requires traceable transaction and adjustment history.
• Support and Operations: Requires monitoring, backup, incident, recovery, and support documentation.
• Delivery Team: Requires approved priorities, stable acceptance criteria, technical standards, and timely decisions.

Stakeholder engagement plan

• The Product Owner attends backlog refinement, sprint planning, and sprint review.
• The Inventory Manager attends workflow discovery, prototype reviews, and user acceptance testing.
• The Business Sponsor attends gate reviews, milestone demonstrations, and release approval.
• The Operations Owner reviews deployment, monitoring, recovery, support, and maintenance readiness.
• The Quality Assurance Engineer publishes a sprint quality report before each review.

Technical feasibility

The project is technically feasible as a conventional responsive web application using a browser client, secure application layer, relational database, background job processing, and managed deployment environment. Batch-level inventory, transactions, reporting, and alert generation are standard application capabilities. The main technical challenge is preserving inventory integrity under concurrent updates, imports, corrections, and transfers.

Operational feasibility

The application is operationally feasible when the business assigns ownership for product setup, daily expiry review, periodic physical counts, user access, and waste categorization. The pilot must confirm that the workflows fit daily store operations and do not require excessive data entry.

Economic feasibility

The expected benefits include reduced spoilage, fewer emergency purchases, improved stock visibility, faster reviews, and better purchasing decisions. The project will be considered economically justified when the estimated annual reduction in waste and labor exceeds the annual hosting, support, maintenance, and training cost.

Schedule feasibility

A 12-week first release is feasible when the product scope remains limited to the documented core capabilities, stakeholder decisions are provided within two business days, and external system integrations remain outside the first release.

Legal, privacy, and security feasibility

The application stores employee account details, audit events, supplier information, and operational business data. The project must implement data minimization, role-based access, secure credential handling, retention controls, backup protection, auditability, and incident procedures. No payment-card or patient information is included in the approved scope.

Feasibility decision

Decision FEA-01: Proceed with development using the approved scope and Agile delivery plan. Reassess feasibility if the business adds offline synchronization, regulated data, real-time point-of-sale integration, or a multi-tenant commercial SaaS requirement during the first release.

Functional requirements and business rules

Requirement conventions

Functional requirements use the identifier FR-###. Business rules use BR-###. Each requirement must be linked to one or more business objectives, backlog items, design references, test cases, and release evidence.

Identity and access requirements

• FR-001: The system shall allow an authorized administrator to create, activate, deactivate, and assign roles to user accounts.
• FR-002: The system shall authenticate users through a secure sign-in process and terminate access when the session expires or the account is deactivated.
• FR-003: The system shall support the roles Administrator, Manager, Inventory Staff, and Read-Only Reviewer.
• FR-004: The system shall restrict pages, actions, records, exports, and configuration functions according to the authenticated user's organization, branch assignment, and role.

Product and supplier requirements

• FR-005: Authorized users shall create and update products with name, stock-keeping unit, category, unit, reorder level, active status, and default expiry-warning period.
• FR-006: Authorized users shall create and update supplier records with contact and status information.
• FR-007: The system shall prevent duplicate active stock-keeping units within the same organization.
• FR-008: The system shall allow controlled CSV import of products and suppliers with preview, validation, error reporting, and explicit confirmation.

Inventory batch requirements

• FR-009: Inventory staff shall record a received batch with product, branch, supplier, received date, expiration date, quantity, unit cost, and optional reference number.
• FR-010: The system shall calculate the remaining quantity for each batch from approved inventory transactions.
• FR-011: The system shall assign each batch an expiry status of Expired, Urgent, Warning, or Safe using the current date and configured thresholds.
• FR-012: The system shall display available inventory by product, branch, batch, expiration date, and status.
• FR-013: The system shall recommend the earliest valid expiration batch when users record stock deductions.

Stock movement requirements

• FR-014: Authorized users shall record stock-in, stock-out, waste, return, transfer, and correction transactions.
• FR-015: The system shall reject transactions that would reduce a batch below zero unless an Administrator performs an approved corrective reconciliation.
• FR-016: A branch transfer shall create linked source deduction and destination receipt records under one transfer reference.
• FR-017: Every inventory transaction shall record the product, batch, branch, quantity, transaction type, timestamp, initiating user, reason, and reference where applicable.
• FR-018: Authorized users shall reverse an incorrect transaction through a linked compensating transaction rather than deleting the original audit record.

Expiry alert requirements

• FR-019: The system shall generate an expiry review list containing all batches classified as Expired, Urgent, or Warning.
• FR-020: Users shall filter expiry items by branch, product, category, supplier, expiry status, and date range.
• FR-021: Authorized users shall record an action for an expiry item, including Discount, Transfer, Return to Supplier, Consume First, Dispose, or No Action.
• FR-022: The dashboard shall show counts and values for batches expiring within 7, 14, and 30 days.

Waste and reporting requirements

• FR-023: Users shall record waste quantity, reason, notes, responsible branch, affected batch, and disposal date.
• FR-024: The system shall calculate waste value using the affected batch quantity and unit cost.
• FR-025: Managers shall view waste totals by date, branch, product, category, supplier, and reason.
• FR-026: Managers shall generate inventory, expiry, stock movement, and waste reports for a selected period.
• FR-027: Authorized users shall export report results to CSV without exposing data outside their assigned organization and branch scope.

Audit and administration requirements

• FR-028: The system shall record audit events for sign-in, failed sign-in, account changes, role changes, imports, exports, configuration changes, inventory corrections, transaction reversals, and release-sensitive administrative actions.
• FR-029: Administrators shall configure organization details, branches, expiry thresholds, waste reasons, and transaction reference settings.
• FR-030: Read-Only Reviewers shall view authorized inventory and report data without creating or changing operational records.

Business rules

• BR-001: Expiration dates must not be earlier than received dates.
• BR-002: A batch is Expired when its expiration date is earlier than the current business date.
• BR-003: A batch is Urgent when it expires within 0 to 7 days, Warning when it expires within 8 to 30 days, and Safe when it expires after 30 days unless an approved product-specific threshold overrides the default.
• BR-004: Only Administrators and Managers may approve corrective adjustments greater than the configured variance threshold.
• BR-005: Waste transactions cannot exceed the remaining quantity of the selected batch.
• BR-006: Products with historical transactions shall be deactivated rather than permanently deleted.
• BR-007: Inventory balances shall be derived from immutable approved transactions and shall not be edited directly.
• BR-008: Timestamps shall be stored consistently and displayed using the organization's configured business timezone.

Non-functional requirements and acceptance criteria

Performance requirements

• NFR-001: Under a normal load of 50 concurrent users, 95% of authenticated page requests shall complete within 2 seconds, excluding large exports.
• NFR-002: Inventory searches over 100,000 transaction records shall return the first result page within 3 seconds under normal operating conditions.
• NFR-003: A CSV export of up to 50,000 records shall complete or enter a background processing state within 10 seconds.

Availability and recovery requirements

• NFR-004: The production service shall achieve at least 99.5% monthly availability, excluding approved maintenance windows.
• NFR-005: Production data shall be backed up at least daily, with transaction-log or equivalent incremental protection sufficient to meet the recovery point target.
• NFR-006: The recovery point objective shall be no more than 24 hours for general configuration data and no more than 1 hour for inventory transaction data.
• NFR-007: The recovery time objective for a verified production outage shall be no more than 4 hours.

Security and privacy requirements

• NFR-008: All network communication shall use HTTPS in production.
• NFR-009: Passwords shall be processed using an approved adaptive password-hashing algorithm and shall never be stored or logged in plaintext.
• NFR-010: Authorization shall be enforced on the server for every protected action and record query.
• NFR-011: The system shall protect state-changing requests against cross-site request forgery, injection, insecure direct object reference, and other applicable web risks.
• NFR-012: Sensitive configuration values shall be stored outside source code using protected environment or secret-management controls.
• NFR-013: Security-relevant audit records shall be retained for at least 12 months unless an approved retention policy specifies a longer period.

Usability and accessibility requirements

• NFR-014: The application shall support current stable versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari.
• NFR-015: Primary workflows shall remain usable at viewport widths from 360 pixels upward without horizontal page scrolling, except for intentionally scrollable data tables.
• NFR-016: Interactive controls shall be keyboard operable and provide visible focus indicators.
• NFR-017: Form fields shall have programmatically associated labels, validation messages, and clear error recovery instructions.
• NFR-018: Status shall not be communicated by color alone.
• NFR-019: The production release shall satisfy the project's WCAG 2.2 Level AA accessibility checklist for applicable user interface components.

Maintainability and quality requirements

• NFR-020: Business-critical inventory calculation logic shall have at least 90% automated statement coverage and explicit boundary tests.
• NFR-021: The complete maintained codebase shall have at least 80% automated statement coverage unless an approved exception identifies generated, infrastructure, or low-value code.
• NFR-022: All production changes shall pass code review, automated tests, static analysis, dependency checks, and deployment validation.
• NFR-023: Database schema changes shall be version-controlled, repeatable, and backward compatible during rolling deployment when applicable.
• NFR-024: Production logs shall contain correlation identifiers and sufficient diagnostic context without exposing passwords, tokens, or unnecessary personal data.

Core acceptance criteria

• AC-001: Given an Administrator creates an Inventory Staff account assigned to Branch A, when that user signs in, then the user can access Branch A inventory workflows but cannot access administrator-only account management.
• AC-002: Given a product has a batch expiring five days from the business date, when the expiry list loads, then the batch appears with Urgent status and the correct remaining quantity.
• AC-003: Given a batch contains 10 units, when a user attempts to deduct 11 units, then the transaction is rejected and no inventory balance changes.
• AC-004: Given two batches of the same product expire in 5 and 20 days, when a stock deduction begins, then the system recommends the batch expiring in 5 days.
• AC-005: Given waste is recorded for 3 units at a unit cost of 50, when the waste report loads, then the waste value is shown as 150 and the batch remaining quantity is reduced by 3.
• AC-006: Given a user reverses an incorrect stock-out transaction, when the audit history is reviewed, then both the original transaction and linked compensating transaction remain visible.
• AC-007: Given a Manager filters the expiry report by Branch B and the next 14 days, then only authorized Branch B batches within the selected period appear.
• AC-008: Given an unauthorized user requests another branch's inventory record directly, then access is denied and the attempt is logged without exposing the protected record.
• AC-009: Given a product import contains invalid rows, when the preview is generated, then valid and invalid rows are identified and no records are committed before explicit confirmation.
• AC-010: Given the production database is restored from backup, when the recovery validation procedure runs, then user access, products, transactions, balances, and reports pass the documented integrity checks within the recovery objective.

Requirements traceability and backlog management

Traceability objectives

Traceability ensures that every implemented capability supports an approved business objective and that every approved requirement has design, test, review, and release evidence. The Product Owner owns business traceability, while the Quality Assurance Engineer verifies test and release traceability.

Traceability chain

The required traceability relationship is:

Business Objective
  -> Functional or Non-Functional Requirement
  -> Backlog Item
  -> Design Decision or Component
  -> Risk or Control
  -> Test Case
  -> Acceptance Evidence
  -> Release Version

Identifier scheme

• BO-### — Business objective
• FR-### — Functional requirement
• NFR-### — Non-functional requirement
• BR-### — Business rule
• AC-### — Acceptance criterion
• US-### — User story or backlog item
• ADR-### — Architecture decision record
• RSK-### — Project or operational risk
• TC-### — Test case
• DEF-### — Defect
• CR-### — Change request
• REL-### — Release record

Representative product backlog

• US-001: As an Administrator, I want to manage user access so that only authorized employees can use protected functions. Links: BO-04, FR-001 to FR-004, NFR-009 to NFR-012, AC-001, AC-008.
• US-002: As an Inventory Manager, I want to configure products and suppliers so that stock can be recorded consistently. Links: BO-03, FR-005 to FR-008, BR-006, AC-009.
• US-003: As Inventory Staff, I want to receive stock by batch and expiration date so that expiring quantities can be tracked accurately. Links: BO-01, BO-02, FR-009 to FR-012, BR-001 to BR-003, AC-002.
• US-004: As Inventory Staff, I want the system to recommend the earliest-expiring batch so that older stock is consumed first. Links: BO-01, FR-013, BR-007, AC-004.
• US-005: As Inventory Staff, I want to record stock movements without producing negative balances. Links: BO-04, FR-014 to FR-018, BR-004 to BR-008, AC-003, AC-006.
• US-006: As a Branch Manager, I want a prioritized expiry review list so that I can act before stock expires. Links: BO-01, BO-02, BO-03, FR-019 to FR-022, AC-002, AC-007.
• US-007: As a Manager, I want to record and analyze waste so that recurring causes can be reduced. Links: BO-01, BO-05, FR-023 to FR-027, AC-005.
• US-008: As an Auditor, I want immutable transaction and audit histories so that inventory changes can be verified. Links: BO-04, FR-017, FR-018, FR-028, BR-007, AC-006.

Representative traceability matrix

ID      Objective  Backlog  Design          Risk     Test Cases       Release
FR-001  BO-04      US-001   ADR-003/RBAC    RSK-004  TC-001, TC-002   REL-1.0
FR-009  BO-01      US-003   Batch Service   RSK-001  TC-010, TC-011   REL-1.0
FR-013  BO-01      US-004   FEFO Selector   RSK-002  TC-014, TC-015   REL-1.0
FR-015  BO-04      US-005   Transaction DB  RSK-001  TC-018, TC-019   REL-1.0
FR-019  BO-02      US-006   Alert Engine    RSK-002  TC-024, TC-025   REL-1.0
FR-024  BO-01      US-007   Waste Service   RSK-003  TC-030, TC-031   REL-1.0
NFR-010 BO-04      US-001   Auth Middleware RSK-004  TC-040, TC-041   REL-1.0
NFR-006 BO-04      US-009   Backup Design   RSK-006  TC-050, TC-051   REL-1.0

Backlog prioritization

The Product Owner shall prioritize items using business value, risk reduction, dependency order, stakeholder urgency, and delivery effort. Core inventory integrity, access control, batch expiry, and recovery requirements are mandatory for Release 1.0. Cosmetic improvements and advanced analytics may be deferred when release quality or schedule is threatened.

Backlog change rules

• New items require a stable identifier, rationale, acceptance criteria, dependencies, estimate, and traceability links.
• Changes affecting a sprint objective require agreement from the Product Owner and delivery team.
• Changes affecting approved cost, release date, security posture, data model, or scope baseline require a formal change request.
• Removed requirements remain in the history with status, reason, approver, and replacement where applicable.

Traceability review

The Quality Assurance Engineer reviews the matrix before sprint review and release approval. A release cannot be approved when a mandatory requirement lacks passing test evidence, an accepted exception, or an approved deferral.

Architecture, data, security, and interface design

System context

StockGuard is a responsive web application accessed through supported browsers. Users interact with the web client, which communicates with the application service over HTTPS. The application service validates identity, authorization, business rules, and transactions before reading or writing the relational database.

Logical architecture

Browser Client
  -> HTTPS Web Application
      -> Authentication and Authorization
      -> Product and Supplier Module
      -> Inventory Transaction Module
      -> Expiry Alert Module
      -> Waste and Reporting Module
      -> Import and Export Module
      -> Audit and Administration Module
      -> Background Job Worker
          -> Relational Database
          -> Protected File or Object Storage
          -> Monitoring and Logging Services

Architecture decisions

• ADR-001: Use a modular web application architecture for Release 1.0 to reduce deployment and operational complexity while maintaining clear module boundaries.
• ADR-002: Use a relational database because inventory transactions, batches, branches, users, and reports require strong consistency and controlled relationships.
• ADR-003: Enforce organization, branch, and role authorization in the server-side application layer for every protected operation.
• ADR-004: Treat approved inventory transactions as immutable records. Corrections use compensating entries.
• ADR-005: Calculate current batch balance from transaction records, with optional controlled summary tables for performance.
• ADR-006: Process large imports, exports, and scheduled alert refreshes through background jobs.
• ADR-007: Keep the first release online-only; offline synchronization is excluded because it introduces conflict-resolution and data-integrity risk.

Core data entities

• Organization: Business-level configuration, timezone, default expiry thresholds, and retention settings.
• Branch: Physical or operational inventory location.
• User: Account identity, status, organization, branch assignments, and roles.
• Role and Permission: Authorized capabilities and record scope.
• Category: Product classification.
• Product: Stock-keeping unit, name, unit, category, reorder level, and expiry configuration.
• Supplier: Supplier identity, contact details, and active status.
• Inventory Batch: Product, branch, supplier, received date, expiration date, original quantity, and unit cost.
• Inventory Transaction: Immutable stock movement, quantity, type, user, timestamp, reason, and reference.
• Transfer: Linked source and destination movement group.
• Expiry Action: Planned or completed response to expiring stock.
• Waste Event: Batch, quantity, value, reason, notes, user, and timestamp.
• Audit Event: Actor, action, target, result, metadata, timestamp, and correlation identifier.
• Import Job and Export Job: File reference, status, validation results, owner, and timestamps.

Data integrity controls

• Foreign-key constraints protect required relationships.
• Unique constraints protect organization-specific product codes.
• Database transactions make linked stock movements atomic.
• Optimistic locking or equivalent concurrency controls prevent silent overwrites.
• Quantity and date validation occurs before persistence.
• All balance-changing operations use a single approved inventory transaction service.
• Administrative data repair requires an approved script, backup, review, and audit evidence.

Primary pages and user journeys

• Sign In: Authenticate, recover access, and display secure error messages.
• Dashboard: Show inventory value, low stock, expiring stock, expired stock, waste, and urgent actions.
• Products: Search, create, update, deactivate, import, and inspect product history.
• Inventory: View stock by product and batch, receive stock, deduct stock, transfer stock, and reconcile differences.
• Expiry Review: Filter expiring batches, prioritize urgent items, and record actions.
• Waste: Record waste and analyze reasons and value.
• Reports: Generate inventory, expiry, movement, and waste reports.
• Administration: Manage users, roles, branches, settings, reasons, and audit records.

Interface design standards

• Use consistent navigation and page titles.
• Present the most urgent expiry and stock conditions before general metrics.
• Require confirmation for destructive or balance-changing actions.
• Show field-level validation beside the affected control.
• Preserve user filters when navigating between list and detail views where practical.
• Provide empty, loading, success, warning, error, unauthorized, and offline states.
• Use text labels and icons together for critical inventory statuses.
• Ensure data tables support keyboard navigation, readable headers, responsive overflow, and accessible pagination.

Security design

• Server-side authentication and authorization middleware
• Secure, HTTP-only, same-site session cookies where cookie sessions are used
• Rate limiting for authentication, password reset, imports, and exports
• Input validation and context-appropriate output encoding
• Parameterized database queries or trusted data-access abstractions
• Content Security Policy and secure response headers
• Dependency scanning and regular security updates
• Audit trails for access, configuration, import, export, and inventory corrections
• Restricted production access with separate user identities and least privilege

Delivery schedule, roles, milestones, and project controls

Delivery approach

The project will use six two-week sprints over 12 weeks. Each sprint must produce a reviewed, tested, and potentially releasable increment. The initial production release is REL-1.0.

Milestone schedule

• Week 1 — Gate G1: Approve business case, scope, feasibility, stakeholders, initial requirements, and project risks.
• Sprint 1, Weeks 1 to 2: Project foundation, environments, authentication, roles, organization, branches, design system, and automated pipeline.
• Sprint 2, Weeks 3 to 4: Products, categories, suppliers, imports, validation, and product administration.
• Sprint 3, Weeks 5 to 6: Inventory batches, stock receiving, stock deductions, balance calculations, and movement history.
• Sprint 4, Weeks 7 to 8: Expiry classification, alerts, review workflows, first-expiring-first-out guidance, and dashboard metrics.
• Sprint 5, Weeks 9 to 10: Waste management, reports, exports, audit records, accessibility improvements, and performance optimization.
• Sprint 6, Weeks 11 to 12: Full regression, security verification, recovery testing, user acceptance testing, training, deployment rehearsal, production release, and stabilization.
• End of Week 6 — Gate G2: Confirm architecture and core inventory foundation.
• End of Week 10 — Gate G3: Confirm minimum viable product readiness for user acceptance testing.
• End of Week 12 — Gate G4: Approve or reject production deployment.
• Four weeks after release — Gate G5: Review outcomes and approve closure or extended stabilization.

Responsibility matrix

• Business case: Sponsor accountable; Product Owner responsible; delivery team consulted.
• Requirements and backlog: Product Owner accountable and responsible; Inventory Manager and Quality Assurance Engineer consulted.
• Architecture: Technical Lead accountable and responsible; Developers, Quality Assurance Engineer, and Operations Owner consulted.
• User experience: Product Owner accountable; UX Designer responsible; Inventory Manager and Quality Assurance Engineer consulted.
• Implementation: Technical Lead accountable; Developers responsible; Quality Assurance Engineer consulted.
• Testing: Quality Assurance Engineer accountable; delivery team responsible for assigned test levels.
• Security approval: Technical Lead accountable; Security Reviewer responsible for independent review where available.
• Deployment: Operations Owner accountable; Technical Lead and Developers responsible.
• Production acceptance: Business Sponsor accountable; Product Owner, Quality Assurance Engineer, and Operations Owner provide recommendations.

Communication controls

• Daily delivery coordination for team members
• Weekly stakeholder status containing scope, schedule, quality, risk, decisions, and required actions
• Sprint review with demonstration and recorded acceptance results
• Formal gate review minutes with approval, rejection, conditions, and owners
• Incident communication process for production-impacting issues

Configuration management

• All source code, migrations, infrastructure configuration, test automation, and controlled documentation shall be versioned.
• The protected main branch shall require passing checks and peer review.
• Release candidates shall use immutable version tags.
• Environment-specific secrets shall not be committed to source control.
• Production configuration changes shall be approved, documented, tested, and auditable.

Quality reporting

Each sprint quality report shall include completed requirements, test execution, pass rate, automated coverage, open defects by severity, escaped defects, security findings, accessibility findings, performance results, and unresolved release risks.

Decision management

Material technical and product decisions shall be recorded with identifier, context, considered options, decision, owner, date, consequences, and review trigger. Decisions affecting scope, cost, date, security, or data integrity require Product Owner and Technical Lead approval, with Sponsor approval when a baseline is changed.

Risk management and change control

Risk process

Risks are reviewed during backlog refinement, sprint planning, daily coordination, sprint review, and release readiness. Each risk includes probability, impact, owner, mitigation, contingency, trigger, and residual rating.

Project risk register

• RSK-001 — Incorrect inventory balances: Probability Medium; Impact Critical. Mitigation: immutable transactions, database constraints, atomic updates, concurrency tests, reconciliation reports, and code review. Owner: Technical Lead. Trigger: unexplained balance difference or failed integrity test. Contingency: suspend affected transaction workflow, restore or correct through approved compensating entries, and complete root-cause analysis.
• RSK-002 — Missed or incorrect expiry alerts: Probability Medium; Impact High. Mitigation: centralized date rules, timezone tests, boundary tests, scheduled-job monitoring, and dashboard reconciliation. Owner: Quality Assurance Engineer. Trigger: known expiring batch absent from alert list. Contingency: run manual expiry report, correct classification logic, and notify affected users.
• RSK-003 — Inaccurate waste valuation: Probability Medium; Impact Medium. Mitigation: derive value from batch unit cost, prevent quantity overflow, and test currency rounding. Owner: Product Owner. Trigger: report total differs from transaction evidence. Contingency: suspend affected report and issue corrected results.
• RSK-004 — Unauthorized data access: Probability Medium; Impact Critical. Mitigation: server-side authorization, branch scoping, security tests, least privilege, secure sessions, and audit monitoring. Owner: Technical Lead. Trigger: authorization test failure or suspicious access event. Contingency: revoke sessions, restrict access, investigate, remediate, and follow incident procedures.
• RSK-005 — Low user adoption: Probability Medium; Impact High. Mitigation: prototypes, usability testing, simplified workflows, training, pilot support, and stakeholder demonstrations. Owner: Product Owner. Trigger: low task completion or negative pilot feedback. Contingency: prioritize usability changes and extend the pilot before broad release.
• RSK-006 — Backup or recovery failure: Probability Low; Impact Critical. Mitigation: automated backups, protected storage, retention policy, scheduled restore tests, and recovery runbooks. Owner: Operations Owner. Trigger: failed backup or restore validation. Contingency: pause risky releases, repair backup process, create verified backup, and repeat restore testing.
• RSK-007 — Delivery delay: Probability Medium; Impact Medium. Mitigation: prioritized scope, sprint forecasting, dependency tracking, early risk reduction, and controlled deferral of lower-value items. Owner: Product Owner. Trigger: milestone forecast exceeds the approved release date. Contingency: remove nonessential Release 1.0 scope through change approval.
• RSK-008 — Import causes duplicate or corrupted data: Probability Medium; Impact High. Mitigation: preview, validation, idempotency controls, size limits, transaction rollback, and audit logs. Owner: Technical Lead. Trigger: duplicate identifier or partial import. Contingency: stop imports, reverse the job using approved procedures, and repair the source file.
• RSK-009 — Performance degradation as transactions grow: Probability Medium; Impact Medium. Mitigation: indexed queries, pagination, load testing, asynchronous exports, and query monitoring. Owner: Technical Lead. Trigger: response-time threshold violation. Contingency: optimize queries, add controlled summaries, or temporarily restrict expensive reports.
• RSK-010 — Key stakeholder unavailable: Probability Medium; Impact Medium. Mitigation: delegated approver, documented decisions, scheduled reviews, and two-business-day response target. Owner: Business Sponsor. Trigger: approval delay threatens a sprint or gate. Contingency: delegated stakeholder makes the documented decision.

Change request process

1. Create a change request using identifier CR-###.
2. Describe the requested change, rationale, affected stakeholders, urgency, and expected benefit.
3. Identify affected objectives, requirements, designs, data, risks, tests, documentation, environments, operations, cost, and schedule.
4. Estimate delivery effort and identify whether the change can replace, defer, or invalidate existing scope.
5. Obtain Product Owner and Technical Lead recommendations.
6. Obtain Business Sponsor approval when the change affects the approved release date, cost, business case, major scope, or risk acceptance.
7. Update the backlog, traceability matrix, risk register, design records, test assets, and release plan.
8. Verify the implemented change and record acceptance evidence.

Change classifications

• Minor: Clarification or low-impact change that does not affect baseline scope, security, data integrity, cost, or release date.
• Material: Change affecting a requirement, workflow, design, report, integration, or operational procedure.
• Major: Change affecting architecture, regulated data, multi-tenancy, offline operation, external integration, budget, or release date.
• Emergency: Immediate production correction required to protect security, data integrity, availability, or legal obligations.

Emergency change controls

An emergency change requires an incident record, named approver, tested rollback method, focused verification, production monitoring, and retrospective review. Emergency status does not remove documentation, traceability, or security obligations.

Implementation plan and engineering workflow

Environment strategy

• Local: Developer environment with isolated application and test data.
• Continuous integration: Automated build, linting, static analysis, unit tests, integration tests, dependency checks, and artifact creation.
• Test: Shared environment for functional, integration, accessibility, and exploratory testing.
• Staging: Production-like environment for user acceptance, security verification, performance testing, deployment rehearsal, and rollback rehearsal.
• Production: Restricted live environment with monitoring, backup, audit, and controlled deployment access.

Implementation sequence

1. Establish repository protections, coding standards, branching rules, automated checks, and environment configuration.
2. Implement organization, branch, identity, session, and authorization foundations.
3. Implement product, category, supplier, and import workflows.
4. Implement batch receiving and immutable inventory transactions.
5. Implement balance calculations, first-expiring-first-out guidance, and concurrency controls.
6. Implement expiry classification, review actions, dashboard indicators, and scheduled refresh jobs.
7. Implement waste events, reports, exports, and audit views.
8. Complete responsive behavior, accessibility, security, performance, monitoring, backup, recovery, and operational documentation.
9. Execute user acceptance testing, deployment rehearsal, release approval, and production deployment.

Engineering standards

• Use consistent naming and module boundaries.
• Keep business rules in testable service or domain components rather than duplicating rules across user interface handlers.
• Validate all external input at trusted application boundaries.
• Use database transactions for multi-record inventory operations.
• Use migrations for schema changes and seed only controlled non-production reference data.
• Require peer review for production code and migration changes.
• Document non-obvious decisions, assumptions, failure modes, and operational dependencies.
• Remove debugging output, development credentials, and test accounts before release.

Representative inventory transaction pseudocode

begin database transaction

load authorized batch for update
validate transaction type and requested quantity
calculate current remaining quantity

if requested deduction is greater than remaining quantity
  reject operation
end if

create immutable inventory transaction
recalculate or update controlled balance summary
create audit event

commit database transaction

Code review checklist

• Requirement and acceptance criteria are identified.
• Authorization is enforced on the server.
• Input validation and output handling are appropriate.
• Inventory and date rules are centralized and tested.
• Error handling does not expose sensitive information.
• Database changes are safe, reversible where possible, and documented.
• Automated tests cover success, boundary, failure, and unauthorized cases.
• Logging supports diagnosis without exposing secrets.
• Accessibility and responsive behavior are addressed.
• Documentation and traceability are updated.

Data migration and initialization

The first release may import existing products, suppliers, opening batches, and quantities from approved CSV templates. Before migration, the Product Owner approves the mapping, the Inventory Manager cleans the source data, the Quality Assurance Engineer validates test imports, and the Technical Lead approves the production execution plan.

Migration controls

• Back up the production database before import.
• Validate identifiers, dates, quantities, costs, branches, and required relationships.
• Generate a preview containing valid rows, rejected rows, warnings, and calculated totals.
• Require explicit authorized approval before committing records.
• Record the import file fingerprint, initiating user, validation result, row counts, and completion status.
• Reconcile imported product counts, batch quantities, and total inventory value against the approved source.

Documentation deliverables

• Updated requirements and traceability matrix
• Architecture decisions and data dictionary
• User interface specifications and accessibility checklist
• Source code and database migrations
• Automated and manual test assets
• Deployment, rollback, backup, recovery, monitoring, and incident runbooks
• Administrator, inventory user, manager, and support guides
• Release notes and known limitations

Test strategy, test cases, and quality gates

Test objectives

Testing must demonstrate that StockGuard satisfies approved requirements, protects inventory integrity, enforces access control, classifies expiration correctly, produces accurate reports, supports intended users, and can be safely released and recovered.

Test levels

• Unit testing: Date classification, quantity calculations, valuation, authorization policies, validation rules, and report calculations.
• Component testing: Product, inventory, expiry, waste, import, export, and audit modules.
• Integration testing: Database transactions, authentication, background jobs, storage, reporting, and monitoring integrations.
• System testing: Complete browser workflows across supported roles, branches, devices, and browsers.
• Security testing: Authentication, authorization, session handling, injection resistance, request protection, direct-object access, rate limits, secrets, and dependency findings.
• Accessibility testing: Keyboard navigation, focus order, labels, validation, semantic structure, contrast, status messaging, and zoom.
• Performance testing: Page response, inventory search, concurrent transactions, imports, exports, and reporting.
• Recovery testing: Backup verification, database restore, application recovery, and integrity reconciliation.
• User acceptance testing: Representative business workflows executed by the Inventory Manager and selected users.
• Regression testing: Automated and manual verification of previously accepted capabilities before release.

Test environments and data

Test and staging environments shall use synthetic business data. Production data shall not be copied into lower environments unless formally approved, minimized, protected, and anonymized. Test data must cover multiple branches, roles, products, suppliers, batches, expiration boundaries, quantities, costs, imports, and waste reasons.

Representative test cases

• TC-001 — Authorized account creation: Verify an Administrator can create an active Inventory Staff account with Branch A access. Covers FR-001 and AC-001.
• TC-002 — Role restriction: Verify Inventory Staff cannot access user administration. Covers FR-003, FR-004, NFR-010, and AC-001.
• TC-010 — Valid batch receipt: Receive 100 units with a valid received date and later expiration date. Verify the batch and stock-in transaction. Covers FR-009, FR-010, and BR-001.
• TC-011 — Invalid batch dates: Attempt to receive a batch whose expiration date precedes its received date. Verify rejection and no committed records. Covers BR-001.
• TC-014 — Earliest-expiry recommendation: Verify the system recommends the earliest valid batch. Covers FR-013 and AC-004.
• TC-015 — Expired batch exclusion: Verify expired stock is not recommended for normal sale deduction unless an approved workflow explicitly allows it.
• TC-018 — Negative-stock prevention: Attempt to deduct more than the remaining batch quantity. Verify rejection and unchanged balance. Covers FR-015 and AC-003.
• TC-019 — Concurrent deduction: Submit two deductions against the same limited batch. Verify committed deductions never exceed available quantity. Covers FR-010, FR-015, NFR-020, and RSK-001.
• TC-024 — Expiry boundary classification: Verify batches at minus 1, 0, 7, 8, 30, and 31 days receive the correct status. Covers FR-011 and BR-002 to BR-003.
• TC-025 — Expiry filtering: Verify branch and date filters return only authorized matching batches. Covers FR-019, FR-020, and AC-007.
• TC-030 — Waste value calculation: Record 3 units at a unit cost of 50 and verify a waste value of 150. Covers FR-023, FR-024, and AC-005.
• TC-031 — Excessive waste rejection: Attempt to waste more units than remain in the batch. Verify rejection. Covers BR-005.
• TC-035 — Transaction reversal: Reverse an incorrect stock-out and verify the original and compensating entries remain visible. Covers FR-018 and AC-006.
• TC-040 — Direct object access: Request another branch's record by identifier and verify denial and audit evidence. Covers FR-004, NFR-010, and AC-008.
• TC-041 — Injection and unsafe input: Submit malicious input through search, forms, and imports. Verify safe handling and no unintended command execution. Covers NFR-011.
• TC-045 — CSV import validation: Import valid, duplicate, malformed, and missing-field rows. Verify preview results and no commit before confirmation. Covers FR-008, AC-009, and RSK-008.
• TC-050 — Backup restoration: Restore the latest approved backup to an isolated environment and validate users, products, batches, transactions, balances, and reports. Covers NFR-005 to NFR-007 and AC-010.
• TC-051 — Recovery objective: Measure recovery duration and recovered transaction age against the RTO and RPO.
• TC-060 — Responsive workflow: Complete receive-stock and expiry-review workflows at 360-pixel and desktop widths. Covers NFR-015.
• TC-061 — Keyboard and screen-reader checks: Complete primary workflows using a keyboard and verify labels, focus, errors, and status announcements. Covers NFR-016 to NFR-019.
• TC-070 — Performance threshold: Execute representative load with 50 concurrent users and verify NFR-001 and NFR-002.

Defect severity

• Critical: Data loss, security breach, incorrect inventory balance, unavailable core service, unrecoverable deployment, or incorrect expiry behavior that creates significant business risk.
• High: Core workflow unavailable with no acceptable workaround, unauthorized information exposure, or materially incorrect report.
• Medium: Functional issue with a reasonable workaround or limited operational effect.
• Low: Minor visual, content, or usability issue that does not block the workflow.

Test entry criteria

• Requirements and acceptance criteria are approved.
• Testable build is deployed to the intended environment.
• Required data, accounts, integrations, and monitoring are available.
• Known blocking environment issues are resolved.

Release test exit criteria

• All mandatory requirements have passing evidence or an approved exception.
• No open Critical defects remain.
• No open High defects remain unless the Sponsor, Product Owner, Technical Lead, Quality Assurance Engineer, and Operations Owner accept the documented residual risk.
• Regression, security, accessibility, performance, backup, recovery, and user acceptance tests meet approved thresholds.
• Traceability is complete for Release 1.0 scope.
• Deployment and rollback rehearsals succeed in staging.

Deployment, rollback, release approval, and training

Release package

Release REL-1.0 shall include the approved application artifact, versioned database migrations, infrastructure configuration, environment requirements, automated test results, release notes, known limitations, deployment procedure, rollback procedure, monitoring configuration, backup evidence, recovery evidence, training materials, and approval record.

Pre-deployment checklist

• Release candidate is tagged and immutable.
• Continuous integration checks pass.
• Traceability and release test exit criteria are satisfied.
• Database migrations are reviewed and rehearsed on staging data.
• Production backup completes and restoration evidence is current.
• Configuration values and secrets are verified.
• Monitoring dashboards, alerts, logs, and health checks are active.
• Support contacts and escalation paths are confirmed.
• Users receive the deployment window and expected impact.
• Rollback decision authority is assigned.

Deployment procedure

1. Open the approved release change record and confirm participants.
2. Place the application in maintenance or restricted-write mode when required by the migration plan.
3. Create and verify the pre-deployment database backup.
4. Deploy the approved application artifact.
5. Apply versioned database migrations.
6. Restart or refresh application and background worker services as required.
7. Run automated smoke tests for authentication, product search, batch receipt, stock deduction, expiry list, waste entry, report access, and audit logging.
8. Verify scheduled jobs, queues, storage, monitoring, error rates, and database health.
9. Remove maintenance restrictions.
10. Execute business validation with the Product Owner or delegated user.
11. Record release status, evidence, issues, and final decision.

Rollback triggers

• Critical authentication or authorization failure
• Incorrect stock balance or transaction duplication
• Failed or partially applied migration without a safe forward correction
• Core application unavailable beyond the approved release window
• Material data corruption or loss
• Severe performance degradation affecting normal operation
• Monitoring or logging unavailable for critical workflows

Rollback procedure

1. Declare rollback and stop further production changes.
2. Restrict inventory writes when necessary to prevent additional inconsistency.
3. Capture logs, metrics, deployment identifiers, and failure evidence.
4. Redeploy the previous approved application version.
5. Reverse backward-compatible migrations using approved down procedures, or restore the verified pre-deployment backup when reversal is unsafe.
6. Restart required services and background workers.
7. Run smoke and data-integrity checks.
8. Confirm service restoration with the Product Owner and Operations Owner.
9. Notify users and record the incident, impact, recovery, and next action.
10. Complete root-cause analysis before rescheduling the release.

Release approval record

• Product Owner: Confirms business scope and acceptance criteria.
• Quality Assurance Engineer: Confirms test completion and defect status.
• Technical Lead: Confirms technical, security, migration, and rollback readiness.
• Operations Owner: Confirms monitoring, backup, recovery, support, and deployment readiness.
• Business Sponsor: Authorizes production release and accepts documented residual risks.

Training plan

• Administrators: User access, branches, configuration, imports, audit records, and support escalation.
• Inventory Staff: Product search, batch receiving, stock deduction, transfers, corrections, expiry actions, and waste recording.
• Managers: Dashboard interpretation, expiry review, approvals, reporting, exports, and waste analysis.
• Support Staff: Health checks, logs, common issues, account problems, incidents, backup status, and escalation.

Training acceptance

Training is accepted when at least one Administrator, one Manager, and two Inventory Staff users complete the assigned workflow checklist without critical assistance and confirm access to the relevant user guides.

Release communication

Release notes shall identify the version, deployment date, new capabilities, changed workflows, known limitations, required user actions, support contact, and rollback status. Technical implementation details that create security risk shall not be included in general user communications.

Operations, maintenance, support, and incident management

Operational ownership

After production release, the Operations Owner is accountable for service health, monitoring, backup verification, incident coordination, support escalation, maintenance scheduling, and operational documentation. The Product Owner remains accountable for product priorities and business acceptance.

Monitoring requirements

• Application availability and health-check status
• Response times and error rates
• Authentication failures and authorization denials
• Database connections, storage, query performance, and capacity
• Background job failures, queue depth, and processing duration
• Import and export failures
• Expiry alert refresh success
• Backup completion and backup age
• Critical audit events and suspicious access patterns

Operational service targets

• Critical incident acknowledgment: Within 15 minutes during supported hours
• High incident acknowledgment: Within 1 business hour
• Medium support request acknowledgment: Within 1 business day
• Critical recovery target: Restore an acceptable service within 4 hours
• Backup verification: Reviewed daily
• Restore test: At least quarterly and before major data migrations

Incident severity

• Severity 1: Confirmed security incident, material data loss, incorrect inventory across multiple records, or complete production outage.
• Severity 2: Major workflow unavailable, significant performance degradation, or incorrect report affecting decisions.
• Severity 3: Limited feature failure with a documented workaround.
• Severity 4: Minor defect, content issue, or enhancement request.

Incident workflow

1. Detect or receive the incident report.
2. Record identifier, reporter, time, affected users, symptoms, and business impact.
3. Classify severity and assign an incident owner.
4. Contain risk, including disabling a feature or restricting writes when necessary.
5. Diagnose using logs, metrics, recent changes, and reproduction evidence.
6. Restore service through rollback, configuration correction, data repair, or approved emergency change.
7. Validate inventory integrity and affected workflows.
8. Communicate resolution and remaining user actions.
9. Complete root-cause analysis for Severity 1 and Severity 2 incidents.
10. Create preventive backlog items and update runbooks, tests, monitoring, and risks.

Data correction controls

Production data must not be edited manually without an approved correction plan. The plan must identify affected records, cause, expected result, backup, script or compensating transactions, peer review, validation query, audit evidence, rollback method, and approver.

Maintenance categories

• Corrective maintenance: Defect fixes and incident corrections.
• Adaptive maintenance: Browser, dependency, infrastructure, policy, and business-rule changes.
• Perfective maintenance: Performance, usability, reporting, and workflow improvements.
• Preventive maintenance: Dependency updates, refactoring, backup testing, security hardening, observability, and technical-debt reduction.

Maintenance schedule

• Daily: Review availability, errors, job failures, alerts, and backup status.
• Weekly: Review support issues, security events, performance trends, failed imports, and capacity warnings.
• Monthly: Apply approved dependency and security updates, review access, validate retention jobs, and report service metrics.
• Quarterly: Perform restore testing, access recertification, risk review, operational tabletop exercise, and documentation review.
• Annually: Review architecture fitness, retention requirements, disaster recovery assumptions, security controls, and product success measures.

Support knowledge base

The support repository shall include sign-in troubleshooting, account activation, product import errors, inventory discrepancy investigation, expiry status explanation, report reconciliation, browser support, known limitations, incident escalation, backup status, and recovery procedures.

Enhancement intake

Enhancements enter the product backlog with business value, user problem, affected roles, acceptance criteria, risk, estimate, and priority. Requests for point-of-sale integration, offline operation, automated purchasing, or multi-tenant SaaS operation require a new feasibility and architecture assessment before approval.

Project closure, handover, and post-implementation review

Closure timing

Formal project closure occurs after Release 1.0 has completed at least four weeks of monitored production operation, critical stabilization work is complete, ownership is transferred, and Gate G5 is approved.

Closure criteria

• Release 1.0 is deployed and accepted by the Business Sponsor.
• All mandatory Release 1.0 requirements have accepted evidence.
• No open Critical defects remain.
• Open High defects have approved owners, target dates, workarounds, and residual-risk acceptance.
• Production monitoring, backup, restore, support, incident, and maintenance procedures are operational.
• Administrator, manager, inventory staff, and support training is complete.
• Source code, configuration, architecture, requirements, tests, runbooks, and release records are stored in controlled repositories.
• Production ownership and access responsibilities are formally transferred.
• Financial commitments, vendor obligations, and temporary project resources are reconciled.
• Deferred requirements and technical debt are recorded in the product backlog.
• The post-implementation review is completed and approved.

Handover package

• Approved SDLC documentation and traceability matrix
• Product backlog and roadmap
• Architecture diagrams, decisions, and data dictionary
• Source code, database migrations, and release tags
• Environment inventory and protected configuration ownership
• Automated test suite and manual test evidence
• Deployment, rollback, backup, recovery, monitoring, and incident runbooks
• User, administrator, manager, and support documentation
• Known defects, limitations, accepted risks, and deferred scope
• Vendor, hosting, domain, certificate, and operational renewal information

Post-implementation review

The Product Owner shall compare actual results against the original business objectives using production data and stakeholder feedback.

• BO-01 review: Compare waste value before and after implementation using equivalent periods.
• BO-02 review: Measure the percentage of tracked expiring batches that received timely warnings.
• BO-03 review: Measure the average duration of routine inventory and expiry reviews.
• BO-04 review: Measure the percentage of stock changes linked to valid transaction and audit records.
• BO-05 review: Confirm managers can generate and interpret the required monthly reports.

Lessons learned

The final retrospective shall document successful practices, failed assumptions, recurring defects, estimation accuracy, stakeholder response times, architecture concerns, testing gaps, deployment findings, support issues, and recommendations for the next release.

Residual work

Residual items must include an identifier, description, business effect, risk, priority, owner, target release, and acceptance criteria. Items shall not be omitted from closure records merely because they are deferred.

Final approval record

• Product Owner: Confirms product scope, backlog transfer, and success-measure review.
• Technical Lead: Confirms technical documentation, code ownership, and residual technical risk.
• Quality Assurance Engineer: Confirms final quality evidence and known defect record.
• Operations Owner: Confirms operational handover, access, monitoring, support, backup, and recovery readiness.
• Business Sponsor: Approves closure, accepts residual risks, and authorizes transition from project delivery to ongoing product maintenance.

Closure decision

The project is closed only when the Business Sponsor signs Gate G5. If success measures cannot yet be evaluated, the project may transition to an extended stabilization period with a defined review date, named owners, and measurable exit criteria rather than being closed without evidence.