Carnegie Mellon West Software Management Blog
Wondering if a Carnegie Mellon degree is right for you? Read along as our students chronicle their journey through the MS in Software Management program.
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Chandra is a second-year grad student, a Director, Product Strategy at Oracle, a dedicated father and husband, and he plays a mean game of Wii Tennis. Check back often to read his new insights! |
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Dan is an IT Systems Architect at Boeing and a first-year grad student in the MS Software Management program. He loves reading , biking, and hanging out with friends over a cup of coffee. Most importantly though, he loves education! And thinks the ability to learn is one of the greatest things about people. His favorite quote is “A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.”
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Monday, October 8, 2007
Back to School and the Electives
I cannot deny that the 3 weeks break after the first year of the MS in Software Management was timely and needed. The start of the second year required us to choose between the various courses offered as electives. For example, this semester we were offered a choice of four courses, each one running as a mini-semester of 7 weeks. Typically the semester is 14 weeks long, and if the semester is broken into two, you would have a mini-semester of 7 weeks each. In either case you do get a week off after the first 7 weeks of the mini-semester. We had excellent choices for electives this semester. We had to choose between Business Strategy and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) for the first mini and Product Marketing and Open Source for the second mini. I elected to take the course on HCI and Product Marketing for this semester. There are six of us in the HCI course and this contributes to a very interactive session. Instead of breaking into two groups of three each, we decided to work as a single team. This gives us twice the time with the coaches and the faculty as well as the experience of dealing with a larger team. The initial three weeks of this course have been extremely hectic for me, as I had to travel for work. I did not miss a lot of designated coach facilitated meetings or plenary sessions, however, I did miss a few ad-hoc team meetings and reading sessions. This brings me to the topic of traveling for business or pleasure while at school. I think it can be managed but it does put undue pressure on your team members especially if you are traveling overseas or to the east coast from the west coast as connectivity while traveling is still an issue and is compounded by the time difference. I don’t know the solution to this issue except to minimize traveling as much as possible. Luckily, the meetings remain flexible, so I can continue to keep up with my course assignments and not put all the burden on my teammates. I am really enjoying and learning a lot in this course. Next week I will discuss HCI.
posted by Carnegie Mellon West @ 3:18 PM
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