MBA and M.S. in Enterprise Project Management Dual Degree Master’s Program

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the world of projects and to the real life struggles and challenges that project managers face. The course focuses on the day-today, hands-on problems of managing a project, which is defined as a temporary organization within a permanent organization set up to achieve a specific objective. It will broadly cover the operational and conceptual issues faced by modern project managers. At the end of this course, students should be able to develop, execute and control a basic project plan capable of supporting business objectives linked to measures of success for a single project.

This course provides a theoretical perspective on project management for a better understanding of project implementation in modern organizations. The course is based on the premise that success in project leadership depends on a proper managerial style and attitude, and not on specific tools for planning and controlling. The course focuses on developing the manager’s conceptual thinking and on building "the project manager’s mind." The course helps managers see the entire project landscape and the long-term issues that are critical to project success. It will also address the organizational aspects of initiating and running the program.

Formalized procedures, tools, and techniques used in conceptual and detailed planning of the project. Development of work breakdown structure as the foundation for project cost and project duration. Application of project data in monitoring the project progress and in formulating remedial actions in response to unexpected occurrences.

Project success depends, largely, on the human side. Success in motivating project workers, organizing and leading project teams, communication and sharing information, and conflict resolution, are just a few areas that are critical for project success. However, being primarily technical people, many project managers tend to neglect these "soft" issues, assuming they are less important or that they should be addressed by direct functional managers. The purpose of this course is to increase awareness of project managers to the critical issues of managing people and to present some of the theories and practices of leading project workers and teams.

A comprehensive, all-inclusive description of the Project Management Office (PMO), highlighting features most appropriate and relevant to specific project situations. Motivations for adopting a PMO, such as project performance, project manager competency or the organizational desire to excel. Short-term and long-term functions are identified and discussed. Project evaluation models and PMO implementation guidelines are presented and discussed in detail.

This course focuses on key leadership skills for addressing the complex challenges posed by program management, highly- matrixed environments and cross-national collaborations It’s purpose is enhance individuals’ abilities to develop others, strategically integrate efforts across groups, and drive change. The concepts presented are theory and research driven so that participants can deepen their conceptual understanding. At the same time, the course calls upon learners to address real-life challenges they face as program and or director level leaders. Each session presents effective techniques and uses experiential exercises or assignments to provide plenty of practice. The course also requires participants to further transfer learning to their workplaces through focused development planning and coaching support.

Applied Analytics is a capstone course for the analytic-focused MBA program. It is intended to integrate all previously taken coursed in the program by presenting a set of increasingly complex business problems. These problems can be solved through analytic skill taught in this and previous courses. In particular, the course is intended to reinforce the understanding of analysis as way to build models that can focus attention on parts of the system that can be improved through intervention. The early part of the course uses synthetic data and empirical data readily available for analysis. The second part of the course encourages students to state and solve their own problem, gathering their own data as a part of the analytic process.

An interdisciplinary course which examines the elements of, and the framework for, developing and implementing organizational strategy and policy in competitive environments. The course analyzes management problems both from a technical-economic perspective and from a behavioral perspective. Topics treated include: assessment of organizational strengths and weaknesses, threats, and opportunities; sources of competitive advantage; organizational structure and strategic planning; and leadership, organizational development, and total quality management. The case method of instruction is used extensively in this course.

Executives make decisions every day in the face of uncertainty. The objective of this course is to help students understand how decisions are made, why they are often less than optimal, and how decision-making can be improved. This course will contrast how managers do make decisions with how they should make decisions, by thinking about how “rational” decision makers should act, by conducting in-class exercises and examining empirical evidence of how individuals do act (often erroneously) in managerial situations. The course will include statistical tools for decision-making, as well as treatment of the psychological factors involved in making decisions.

The study of marketing principles from the conceptual, analytical, and managerial points of view. Topics include: strategic planning, market segmentation, product life-cycle, new product development, advertising and selling, pricing, distribution, governmental, and other environmental influences as these factors relate to markets and the business structure.

Project success depends, largely, on the human side. Success in motivating project workers, organizing and leading project teams, communication and sharing information, and conflict resolution, are just a few areas that are critical for project success. However, being primarily technical people, many project managers tend to neglect these "soft" issues, assuming they are less important or that they should be addressed by direct functional managers. The purpose of this course is to increase awareness of project managers to the critical issues of managing people and to present some of the theories and practices of leading project workers and teams.

This course introduces students to fundamental soft skills, work techniques, and technologies employed by management consultants. Topics covered in this course include project scoping, creating statements of work, meeting facilitation, project planning, design of presentations and written reports, management briefs, and delivery of status reports. The course will improve students’ ability to present analyses of issues and organizational problems in a concise, accurate, clear and interesting manner from the perspective of a consultant. This course is designed to be taken prior to the experiential graduate courses in the School of Business, including MGT 809: Industry Capstone Project.

In this course students work on an industry project with a team of their peers under the supervision of a faculty advisor and industry mentor. Students will work on project tasks and manage client expectations while applying their disciplinary and technical knowledge to the project. In addition to the project-specific deliverables, students will produce a statement of work, present weekly project updates, and a final presentation and project report to management. This three-credit course is tied to the Industry Capstone Program in the School of Business. Students must first apply for a project before registering for this course.

This course will provide the student with the principles and techniques of financial and managerial accounting for technical organizations. The emphasis will be on the use of financial data for decision making. The basics of accounting will briefly be covered, with the major amount of time spent on ways to understand, analyze and use the data for decision making. Budgeting and analysis of performance, as well as, recognizing fixed and variable expenses are other key areas of financial management. Issues of valuation, time value of money, uncertainty and risk will be integrated in the material. The one-term course will make extensive use of the text by Weygandt et al (see below), supplemented by cases, exercises, homework and examinations. Emphasis will be on real-world, practical application of the tools of finance to management decision making.

This course covers the fundamental principles of finance. The primary concepts covered include the time value of money, principles of valuation and risk. Specific applications include the valuation of debt and equity securities as well as capital budgeting analysis, financial manager’s functions, liquidity vs. profitability, financial planning, capital budgeting, management of long term funds, money and capital markets, debt and equity, management of assets, cash and accounts receivable, inventory and fixed assets. Additional topics include derivative markets.

Many managerial decisions - regardless of their functional orientation - are increasingly based on analysis using quantitative models from the discipline of management science. Management science tools, techniques and concepts (e.g., data, models, and software programs) have dramatically changed the way businesses operate in manufacturing, service operations, marketing, transportation, and finance. Business Analytics explores data-driven methods that are used to analyze and solve complex business problems. Students will acquire analytical skills in building, applying and evaluating various models with hands-on computer applications. Topics include descriptive statistics, time-series analysis, regression models, decision analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, and optimization models.

This course introduces managers to the essence of business economics – the theories, concepts and ideas that form the economist’s tool kit encompassing both the microeconomic and macroeconomic environments. Microeconomic topics include demand and supply, elasticity, consumer choice, production, cost, profit maximization, market structure, and game theory while the Macroeconomic topics will be GDP, inflation, unemployment, aggregate demand, aggregate supply, fiscal and monetary policies. In addition the basic concepts in international trade and finance will be discussed.

• MGT 641 Marketing Management

• MGT 699 Strategic Management

• FIN 515 Financial Decision Making

• MIS 710 Process Innovation

• SSW 540 Fundamentals of Software Engineering

• SSW 564 Software Requirements Analysis & Engineering

• SSW 555 Agile Methods for SoftwareDevelopment

• SSW 567 Software Testing, Quality Assurance & Maintenance

• CM 510 Fundamentals of Construction Management

• CM 530 Strategic Responses to Cyclical Environments

• CM 560 Sustainable Design

• CM 590 Construction Management II