A Life-Cycle Engineering Case Study

For engineering degree programs, one of the primary objectives is to teach engineering practice in a course-by-course academic structure. Although engineering programs typically have a yearlong senior level design project to provide engineering development experience, it is still a challenge to provide students with the full life-cycle experience and expose them to all of the various dimensions of engineering practice. This paper advocates the development and use of a full life-cycle case study to address such a challenge. A software engineering case study, developed by the authors, and used in various courses and workshops, illustrates the nature, structure and value of this approach. The case study learning objectives emphasize development of engineering practice and acquiring team, problem solving, and analysis skills. The paper also describes how this life-cycle case study can be used throughout a software engineering curriculum.