In C3-1 interviews, students frequently say "we couldn't do X because of budget" and call it out-of-scope — when it is actually a constraint. These two concepts live in different sections of the SRS and serve different purposes.

---

| Concept | One-sentence definition | Where it lives in the SRS |

|---|---|---|

| **Scope** | What the solution **will and will not do** — the boundaries of the deliverable | SRS scope section; often expressed with MoSCoW |

| **Constraint** | A **real-world limit** that restricts what can be done — budget, law, hardware, time | SRS constraints section; categorised (economic, legal, social, technical, usability) |

---

**Scope** is about the solution's **boundary** — you are deciding, with the client, what features are in and out. You have some agency in this decision.

**Constraints** are **facts of the world** — limits imposed on the project by external realities. You cannot remove them by negotiating with the client.

---

The scenario: a school canteen ordering app.

| Priority | Feature | In scope? |

|---|---|---|

| **Must** | Students can place a lunch order by 10 am | Yes |

| **Must** | Staff can view and print daily orders | Yes |

| **Should** | SMS notification when order is ready | Yes |

| **Could** | Loyalty points system | No — out of scope |

| **Won't** | Integration with the school's finance system | No — out of scope for this version |

The "Won't" and "Could (excluded)" items are **out of scope** — the team has decided not to include them in this version.

| Category | Constraint |

|---|---|

| **Economic** | Development must be completed with no additional software licences — free/open-source tools only. Budget for hosting is $0 (school server only). |

| **Legal** | Must comply with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) — student names and order histories cannot be stored beyond 30 days without consent. |

| **Social** | The canteen is staffed by volunteers with low technical confidence — the interface must require no training to operate. |

| **Technical** | Must run in any modern web browser; school iPads run iOS 15. No native app — web-based only. |

| **Usability** | Must be operable with one hand (to hold a tray) by primary-school users (Year 5+). |

---

A very common error:

Budget is a **constraint** (economic). The loyalty points system may be out of scope — but the reason it is out of scope is a separate matter. Write them separately:

- Constraints → "Economic constraint: development resources are limited to the 6-week timeline and free tools; no budget for third-party APIs."

- Scope → "Won't: loyalty points system — excluded from this version to keep scope achievable within the economic constraint."

You can **cross-reference** them like that in your SRS. That is what the 9–10 band looks like.

---

MoSCoW is how you **communicate scope**. Constraints are the **reasons** some things end up in "Could" or "Won't". A strong SRS makes that link explicit — a "Won't" item that exists because of a legal or economic constraint should say so.

At **7–8** band, students describe scope and constraints separately but don't connect them.

At **9–10**, students show that the constraint drove the scope decision: *"The loyalty points system is classified as Won't due to the economic constraint — no budget for third-party payment processing or secure token storage within the project timeline."*

---

At **5–6**, the rubric requires you to *"document the constraints that may impact the development of the proposed solution"* and to *"describe the scope of the proposed software solution"*. These are two separate indicators — they must both appear in the SRS, in separate sections, clearly labelled.

Mixing them up (writing constraints under scope, or calling constraints "things we won't do") signals to the examiner that the student does not understand the analysis stage of the problem-solving methodology.

---

- [Functional vs Non-Functional Requirements](/sd/C03/Functional%20vs%20Non-Functional%20Requirements) — the other common C3-1 pair confusion

- C03 Resources: [external reading and videos](/sd/Resources/C03-Resources)

---

← Back to [C03 Home](/sd/C03/C03-home) · [VCE Software Development Hub](/sd/VCE%20Software%20Development%20Hub)