It is recommended that the students join the International Council on Systems Engineering for the Student Fee of $10.00, and thus gain access to the INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook: The Primer on Metrics, 3rd Edition, and all the proceeding from the last 16 years of international symposia. These benefits are good for an entire calendar year. See see http://www.incose.org .
Also, you may download a free copy of the Defense Acquisition University manual on systems engineering, Systems Engineering Fundamentals, Defense Acquisition University Press, January 2001. See http://www.dau.mil/pubs/gdbks/sys_eng_fund.asp .
1. Overview of the systems engineering domain; definitions key to systems engineering; the system life cycle, and the product development life cycle.
2. Phase gate approach to product development enabled by application of systems engineering principles.
3. Concept exploration and the four types of system requirements that must be extracted from the customer's statement of want and needs. Dual nature of validation, and its differences from verification.
4. Requirement analysis, requirements development, and how these relate to planning for systems integration, verification and validation.
5. Functional analysis, interface analysis, requirements allocation, traceability, and use of commercially available tools to enable these principles to be effectively applied in an integrated team environment.
6. Development of a master compliance matrix, a test and evaluation master plan, and use of technical performance measures in defining system performance.
7. Use of trade study methods for system definition. Applying these methods in concept exploration and system definition.
8. Modeling, simulation and systems analysis enable analysis if alternatives in concept exploration.
9. Applying specialty-engineering disciplines by the system engineer throughout the product development life cycle, and the system life cycle. Gaining practical experience in the use of reliability, system safety and human factors engineering.
10. Examining risk management concepts, techniques, and tools and their utility in the concept exploration phase, as well as carry-over utility into the later phases of the product development life cycle.
11. Use of sample phase gate review checklists to explore the technical management responsibilities and functions of the systems engineering roles as they apply to the entire system and product development life cycles.
12. Examining the later stages of the product development life cycle after Concept Development and understand how knowledge development continues through the phases: preliminary design, detailed design, integration and test, system validation, full rate production.
13. The ideas behind concurrent engineering, design for six sigma and total quality development as they apply to the systems engineering roles responsibilities, and the development of high quality products in any market, industry or sector.
14. Exploring the fundamentals of how an integrated product and process development system can enhance the application of systems engineering principles and what an engineer should look for in a company's "people, methods, tools/processes, and environment (PMTE)".
