Week 18 · overview

Week 18: Capstone Phase 3: Risk Review and Defense

This week, you will build capstone defense dossier for a bounded Drone Engineering scenario. The work stays in classroom-safe analysis, supplied evidence, simulation, planning, and documentation. It does not authorize real flight or unsupervised hardware work.

The engineering problem

The team must defend its capstone mission plan to a reviewer who is looking for unsupported claims and hidden risks.

The core idea is that a good defense shows where the plan is strong and where it must not be overused. Students will connect that idea to risk matrices, no-go gates, evidence grading, limitation statements, and reviewer questions turn a plan into a defensible engineering argument.

Evidence you keep

SequenceEvidence artifact
Lesson 1Mechanism explanation and first evidence table
Lesson 2Boundary note and no-go or revision condition
Lesson 3Review-ready decision table
Capstone LogCapstone defense dossier with limitation statement

Vocabulary and decision lens

Important language this week includes: system boundary, evidence, limitation, no-go condition, revision rule, and capstone phase 3: risk review and defense.

Decision lens: accept the capstone only when every major claim points to evidence and every known limitation is visible.

Approximate time: 3 to 4 class periods, about 160 to 200 minutes of reading, analysis, evidence writing, and review.