STUDY GUIDE · GKU 8
Systems and project engineering study guide (Computer Engineering)
A computer engineering product is a board, its firmware, the software around it and the people who build all three on time and within budget. The first part of this unit is the management side: estimating size and effort, scheduling with the critical path, tracking progress with earned value, handling risk, configuration and change, and choosing a life-cycle model that suits hardware as well as software. The second part is the engineering side: analysing a proposed system and its feasibility, turning requirements into measurable specifications, composing an architecture and checking it by simulation and prototype, and planning the verification and validation that prove it works. Exam questions mix definitions with short calculations — a critical path, a float, a cost index, a payback period, an availability — so each section ends with worked numbers.
Structured by the official ETEC subject standard for this topic: every listed topic and learning outcome, with formulas, figures and worked examples. The full sections are available to members in the app.
SKU 8.1 · Principles of project management
Project planning: scope, estimation and scheduling
The elements of a computer-system project plan, how size and effort are estimated (expert judgement, analogy, basic COCOMO, PERT), and how the critical path method turns a work breakdown into a schedule with floats and a resource plan.
Monitoring and control: earned value, risk, configuration and change
How a running project is measured against its plan with earned value; how risks are identified, ranked by exposure and treated; and how configuration management and a change-control board keep hardware and software baselines consistent.
Hardware and software processes and the system life cycle
Why hardware, software and whole-system engineering are run differently; the stages of a system's life cycle; the waterfall, V, incremental, spiral and agile models; and the tools that support each phase.
SKU 8.2 · System engineering
System analysis, requirements and feasibility
Defining the problem, gathering information from stakeholders, separating functional from non-functional requirements, judging technical, economic, operational and schedule feasibility (NPV, payback, ROI), and deriving measurable system specifications from a requirements document.
Architectural design, modelling, simulation and prototyping
Composing a system architecture by structured (functional) or modular decomposition, partitioning functions between hardware and software against a timing budget, and checking the design before it is built with queueing models, simulation and prototypes.
System testing and validation across the life cycle
Verification against specifications versus validation against the user's need; the test methods that fit each life-cycle stage, from requirement reviews to acceptance and regression; and the numbers used to judge the result: defect removal efficiency, availability and block-diagram reliability.
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