Waterfall SDLC Documentation for a University Course Registration & Scheduling Web Portal

11. Project Controls: Risks, Decisions, Reviews, Approvals, and Deliverables

Detailed Risk Controls

• R-01 Peak Load: Owner: Infrastructure Lead. Trigger: sustained utilization or latency above warning threshold. Response: scale according to approved capacity procedure.
• R-02 Incorrect Rules: Owner: Business Analyst. Trigger: disagreement between implemented behavior and registrar-approved rule. Response: stop affected release, review SRS baseline, submit change if needed.
• R-03 Unauthorized Access: Owner: Security Lead. Trigger: unauthorized record access or privilege bypass. Response: initiate security incident process and restrict affected functionality.
• R-04 Integration Failure: Owner: Technical Lead. Trigger: authoritative student/course service unavailable. Response: protect enrollment integrity, surface controlled error, escalate dependency incident.
• R-05 Deployment Failure: Owner: Release Manager. Trigger: failed smoke test or critical error after release. Response: invoke rollback decision procedure.

Decision Log Examples

• DEC-01: server-side registration validation is authoritative even when equivalent checks are shown in the browser.
• DEC-02: enrollment transactions must be atomic.
• DEC-03: student authentication uses the university identity service rather than portal-specific passwords.
• DEC-04: waitlist capability is excluded from release 1 unless separately approved through change control.

Phase Deliverables

Planning
- Project Charter
- Business Case
- Scope Statement
- Feasibility Assessment
- Initial Schedule
- Stakeholder Register
- Risk Register

Requirements
- Software Requirements Specification
- Business Rules Catalog
- Acceptance Criteria
- Traceability Matrix

Design
- Architecture Specification
- Data Model
- API Contract
- Security Design
- UI/UX Specification
- Deployment Architecture

Development
- Source Code
- Database Migrations
- Automated Tests
- Build Artifacts
- Technical Documentation

Testing
- Test Plan
- Test Cases
- Defect Register
- Performance Report
- Security Review
- UAT Evidence
- Test Completion Report

Deployment
- Release Package
- Deployment Checklist
- Rollback Plan
- Production Verification Record

Maintenance
- Operations Runbook
- Monitoring Plan
- Support Procedures
- Backup/Recovery Procedure
- Maintenance Change Records

Formal Review Gates

1. G1 Planning Approval: authorize Requirements.
2. G2 Requirements Baseline: authorize Design.
3. G3 Design Baseline: authorize Development.
4. G4 Build Complete: authorize formal Testing.
5. G5 Test Acceptance: authorize Production Deployment.
6. G6 Production Acceptance: transfer the system into Maintenance.