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

3. Requirements Phase: Functional and Non-Functional Requirements

Requirements Baseline

All requirements use stable IDs so implementation, test cases, acceptance criteria, and change requests can be traced back to an approved business need.

Functional Requirements

• FR-01 Authentication: the portal shall authenticate users through the approved university identity service.
• FR-02 Role Authorization: the portal shall authorize Student and Registrar roles according to approved permissions.
• FR-03 Course Search: students shall search sections by term, subject, course number, keyword, instructor, and availability.
• FR-04 Course Details: the portal shall display section title, credits, instructor, meeting schedule, location, prerequisites, capacity, and available seats.
• FR-05 Schedule Builder: students shall add candidate sections to a temporary schedule before registration.
• FR-06 Conflict Validation: the portal shall prevent registration when selected sections have overlapping meeting times unless an authorized override exists.
• FR-07 Prerequisite Validation: the portal shall validate required prerequisites before completing registration.
• FR-08 Capacity Validation: the portal shall prevent standard enrollment when a section has reached its enrollment limit.
• FR-09 Registration Window: the portal shall permit registration changes only when the student's assigned registration window and institutional rules allow them.
• FR-10 Register: eligible students shall be able to register for an available section.
• FR-11 Drop: eligible students shall be able to drop a registered section within permitted dates and rules.
• FR-12 Current Schedule: students shall view currently registered sections and total registered credits.
• FR-13 Administrative Override: authorized registrar staff shall apply documented overrides where institutional policy permits.
• FR-14 Section Administration: authorized registrar staff shall review section enrollment and seat availability.
• FR-15 Audit Trail: the system shall record successful and failed registration changes, actor, timestamp, action, affected section, and applicable override reference.
• FR-16 Confirmation: the system shall display a clear success or failure result after each registration or drop request.

Non-Functional Requirements

• NFR-01 Performance: 95% of normal interactive requests shall complete within 2 seconds under the approved expected-load profile.
• NFR-02 Peak Load: the production environment shall support the approved registration-period concurrency target established during capacity planning.
• NFR-03 Availability: monitoring and support procedures shall prioritize portal availability during active registration windows.
• NFR-04 Security: all application traffic shall use HTTPS; authentication tokens and sessions shall follow university security standards.
• NFR-05 Authorization: server-side authorization shall enforce role permissions for every protected operation.
• NFR-06 Privacy: student information shall be limited to authorized users and business purposes defined by institutional policy.
• NFR-07 Auditability: security-sensitive and enrollment-changing operations shall produce tamper-resistant operational logs according to institutional retention requirements.
• NFR-08 Accessibility: primary registration workflows shall support keyboard use, semantic form labels, visible focus indicators, sufficient contrast, and accessible validation feedback.
• NFR-09 Responsive UI: required student workflows shall remain usable at common mobile, tablet, and desktop widths.
• NFR-10 Reliability: registration transactions shall avoid partial enrollment changes when validation or persistence fails.
• NFR-11 Recoverability: database backups and documented recovery procedures shall exist before production launch.
• NFR-12 Maintainability: business rules, API services, UI modules, database migrations, and automated tests shall use documented project conventions.

Business Rules

• BR-01: a student cannot register for the same section twice.
• BR-02: only active sections for the selected academic term may accept enrollment.
• BR-03: completed registration must not exceed defined academic credit restrictions unless an authorized override exists.
• BR-04: registration validation must use authoritative course, section, prerequisite, student, and enrollment records.

Requirements Phase Gate

The Software Requirements Specification, business rules, data definitions, acceptance criteria, and requirement traceability baseline require approval from Registrar Operations, Academic Advising, IT Architecture, Security/Privacy, and the Project Sponsor before Design begins.