A COMPARISON OF COMPETENCES REQUIRED IN REVERSE ENGINEERING EXERCISES VERSUS CONVENTIONAL ENGINEERING EXERCISES AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO IPMA’S COMPETENCE BASELINE

Abstract

The International Project Management Association (IPMA) through its IPMA – ICB Competence Baseline Version 3.0 provides the official definition of the competences expected from project management practitioners and describes the competence elements necessary to develop and realize good project plans and results. In this document, professional project management is broken down into 46 competence elements that cover three ranges: Technical competences for project management; Behavioral competences of project personnel and Contextual competences of projects. As these competences are expected from project management practitioners, it is important to discover how students from related fields start acquiring and developing these competence elements; for example through D/A/A activities (Disassemble, Analysis, Assembly ) also known as Reverse Engineering activities which provide useful ‘hands-on’ learning experiences and are used as a complement to conventional engineering design exercises in an educational context and require the use of several of the competences mentioned in the baseline document. A methodological comparison of the activities involved during a forward engineering exercise versus a reverse engineering exercise is presented, expecting to understand the links between the competences exercised at an educational stage and those expected later during the project engineering practice and how to reflect these findings in improved educational curricula. Keywords: engineering design education; competences; reverse engineering