Exercise: A Course Management System

You are part of the software team tasked with the fundamental requirements and overall architecture of a new course-management system to replace Canvas. The new system should do, at least, all the good things Canvas does, none of the bad things, and overall be much better and more useful than it currently is.

The main stakeholder groups are:

1. students
2. teachers
3. teaching support staff (TAs, lab assistants, course designers, etc.)
4. system administrators (i.e. the tech people who keep the system up and running)
5. university administrators (e.g. the people who are paying for the system)

Exercise

Divide into 5 groups, one group for each of the above stakeholders. Brainstorm within your group the following:

• Must-have requirements
• Optional requirements
• Must not-have requirements
• A high-level architecture that works best for your stakeholder group
• 2 or 3 concrete scenarios that can be used to illustrate all of the above requirements in a group meeting of all stakeholders

For the requirements, include both functional and non-functional requirements, and clearly indicate which is which.