Honours research projects are designed to help novice researchers to make the transition from being taught about and solving practical computing related problems, to doing research. The offering of the subject is unique in the sense that the conventional teaching model is not ideal; its needs are closer to a third-year capstone project module approach, but the situation is more complex and therefore needs special treatment. Typically, these subject modules are not a one-lecturer-does-everything-offering, because every student needs guidance to complete their project, and to support teaching in a wide variety of research specific topics. It makes more sense to include a small team of staff members to coordinate honours research projects, and to include academic staff as study leaders and topic specific experts. A compact, two-phase Design Science Research method is utilised to allow a design-as-artefact for each entity under scrutiny, as the first phase. This approach accommodates each university as an alternative design. In the second phase, the design alternatives are tested by comparing the results from the alternatives obtained from the two cycles according to requirements. A third Design Science Research cycle-for-demonstration extracts the best practice alternative design. Future research includes implementing the new design at the two participating universities. This paper also extends an invitation to other universities to implement the new design, and in doing so contribute to the debate and the improvement of future implementations.