The development of a tailored systems engineering process for extracurricular student design projects

A tailored systems engineering process was developed for undergraduate projects to help students learn about systems engineering while at the same time, delivering a level of professionalism to the projects concerned. Initial attempts at applying the full systems engineering process to an undergraduate project were unsuccessful, as the full process was too complicated for the students involved to use and understand. Subsequently, a systematic approach was used to create the tailored systems engineering process. This process was then applied successfully in an undergraduate project to produce a product that was of a comparable standard to one developed with the full process. The results of this study found that tailoring was necessary, that both the project and the students ultimately benefited from the application of the process, developing skills and abilities beyond those developed in traditional lectures. Some of the other lessons learnt about the tailoring process are also discussed, along with the future directions of this study