SystemEngineering

Workshop 4: Group Project

Introduction

This workshop concerns the process of getting started on a project. The initial meeting of a design team usually occurs either during the tender process (when the design team is bidding for the contract to undertake the design) or later when the contract is issued. In both cases there is a natural stage of discussing the project scope and brainstorming initial ideas for the design. This is a natural stage but needs to be undertaken with care, since it occurs before the formal requirements analysis process and before any benchmarking and more formal problem scope processes are undertaken. It is always a risk that ideas settled on in the initial stages become accepted without proper consideration.

The Design teams have been randomly assigned. You will find your group information on the course web site. This is a deliberate aspect of the course – you do not get to choose the people with whom you work on a design team.

Activity 1: Forming Groups Within the Tutorial

Form your allocated group project team. Within these groups discuss:

• Go through the projects one by one. Take time with each project to discuss the issues and scope associated with each project.
• Discuss what sort of solutions might be possible for each project.
• Discuss what the likely limitations of your thinking are going to be for such a project.
  • Do you bring certain skills to the project.
  • Do you bring preconceived ideas of technology.
  • Do you bring socio-economic biases.
• Take notes on ideas for solutions.
• Take notes on important requirements and needs that come up. These can form the first ideas for stakeholder requirements.

Activity 2: A System Engineering Perspective on the Project

The approach of the course is to take a systems engineering approach to the projects. Such an approach is going to require you to consider the stages of Requirements Analysis, Functional Analysis and Allocation and Design.

Discuss the Requirements Analysis process for each of the projects.

• What are the tasks that will need to be undertaken for requirements analysis.
• What are the resources that you can consider for the task.
  • Are there internet resources you can access.
  • Do any of you know contacts that could be useful to talk to.
  • Do you have particular questions for the tutors or lecturer.
• What are the deliverables that you will need to generate for the requirements analysis.
• What is a reasonable timeline to meet to generate the requirements analysis document.

Activity 3: Decide on a Project

Discuss the possible project choices and choose one.

Take into account:

• Don’t just think of a project that you think you have a cool solution for.
• Consider the process you will need to do for requirements analysis.
• Think of the processes you will need to do for analysis of concept sketches. Do you have the skill sets in your team?
• Once you have made a decision as to which project – register on the course website.
• Start with the initial allocation of jobs for the requirements analysis.

Group Project instructions can be accessed here.

Group Project Topics

1. Project A: Urban Composting and Processing
2. Project B: Global Emergency Alert System
3. Project C: Software Security on Legacy Systems
4. Project D: Autonomous Ocean Mapping

Learning Outcomes

• Understand the nature of the initial scoping exercise undertaken by a project team when first considering a project.

• Understand different types of requirements, constraints, and assumptions encountered during systems design.

Additional Reading

Project Scope module in the ANU self-study modules on the wattle page.