Student Blogs
MS in Software Engineering, Development Management Track Blog
Wondering if a Carnegie Mellon degree is right for you? Read about our students' experiences through the MS in Software Engineering, Development Track program.
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Linda is a first year part-time student in Carnegie Mellon's MS Software Engineering, Development Management track. She is a Software Developer at Electronic Arts in Redwood Shores, CA. She likes to dance and sing and her favorite videogame is The Beatles RockBand. She enjoys Indian, Japanese, Thai, Italian and Mexican food. She comes from Mexico City, and has being living in CA for the past two years. |
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Pras Sarkar is a second-year part-time student in the MS Software Engineering Development Management track. He works in Yahoo! Labs. His responsibilities include materializing ideas and concepts into engaging prototypes and demos, some of which ultimately mature into products that Yahoo! visitors use everyday. He is interested in emerging web technologies, social interaction over digital mediums, and creative interfaces that push the boundaries of human computer interaction. |
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Vineet is a Lead Developer at Boeing and a second year grad student in the part-time MS Software Engineering, Development Management program. He loves reading, playing with his daughter and pursuing the religious aspect of his life. He is an active volunteer of Vedic Cultural Center, a Seattle-based organization dedicated to promote the Vedic (ancient Indian) arts, culture, music and dance. |
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Truc is a second year part-time student in Carnegie Mellon's MS Software Engineering, Development Management track. She is a Software Engineer at Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, CA. She loves food and enjoys anything related to food: going to different restaurants, cooking, watching the Food Network, and of course, eating! |
Monday, October 1, 2007
Start of Year Two
Year Number Two has started, and it’s time for me to start the management-specific portion of the program.
We are now separated from the technical track students (if you want to know what they are up to, I suggest reading Minh’s blog), and doing joint work with the software management program students.
During the Elements of Software Management course, we are not working on teams anymore but rather in what we call study groups: our deliverables are individual but we discuss readings and assignments. Also, my group decided to review each other’s assignments in an effort to improve communication and (hopefully) quality.
The basic idea of this course is that we are assigned a particular software company to analyze from different aspects: strategy, finances, etc. It can be pretty interesting at times and pretty boring at others (I’m not a huge fan of financial statements, although some of my other classmates are really into it). However, I think it puts a lot more emphasis on the business aspect of software: this is why I switched from the Technical to Development Management track.
The change of pace is kind of hard to get accustomed to after having fallen into a routine for the past 3 semesters, but overall I think it will make me appreciate better the challenges faced by higher-level managers and executives. So far, I have learned a lot of things with which I was not at all familiar – from finding a company’s strategy to reading a balance sheet.
But more than that, the idea is that we are simultaneously learning all this and doing it at the same time. This is something one of the people in my focus group mentioned: if I only had to do the readings, I would forget that stuff pretty quickly. However, since I am analyzing a company at the same time it actually gives me the opportunity to see how this applies to the real world.
I also think learning this has made me a more well-rounded individual and while I currently don’t need all I’m learning in my job it certainly opens up more opportunities and it has allowed me to have interesting conversations with project managers and directors at work, and I think that’s what this is all about: even though I am far from being an executive I am now able to understand their jobs and the kind of decisions they have to make every day.
That’s it for today. Next time I’ll try to talk a little more on the dynamics of study groups and how this affects the way we work.
posted by Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley @ 2:00 PM
