EGRMGMT 510: Marketing

This course examines core concepts in marketing and marketing-oriented management. It develops competence in the use of modern marketing techniques and their application in the design, development, and commercialization of new products and services in rapidly changing markets. The class combines lectures and cases, many of which focus on technology-based products and services. Students learn the frameworks for analyzing market opportunities and product potential. Other topics include consumer behavior, product management, pricing strategies, direct and online selling, branding, channel management, and promotions.

3 credits

EGRMGMT 520: Intellectual Property, Business Law, and Entrepreneurship

Intellectual Property, Business Law, and Entrepreneurship provide students with the legal and fundamentals to protect their business ventures and intellectual property. The course is divided into three modules. The first module focuses on the implication of decisions made at the formation of business ventures. The second module focuses on the patent process in which students write their own patents. The third module focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of patents, copyrights, and trade secrets. Other topics include principle-agent relations, governance of small companies, mergers and acquisitions, contract law, patents in foreign countries, and corporate take-overs.

3 credits

EGRMGMT 530: Finance in High-Tech Industries

EGRMGMT 501: Engineering Management Seminar

Current topics in applied engineering management and entrepreneurship. Weekly seminar and workshop series.

Credit/No Credit.

• More about the seminar and workshop series
• Offered: Fall and Spring Semester (mandatory enrollment and completion for two semesters).

EGR 590: Special Topics: Career Design and Strategy

For MEM On-Campus students matriculating in the Fall 2023 semester, there will be a mandatory one credit course called Career Design and Strategy. This six-week intensive course is designed to teach the principles of effective self-advocacy and ways to apply what is learned in an active internship and job search. Students will identify their professional strengths and values, explore career paths of interest, and learn to articulate whether and how selected paths align.

Students will finish the course with a powerful professional portfolio, including tailored job search materials, an action plan for a successful search, and with the confidence and tools to purposefully direct their Duke experience to help them reach their goals.

EGRMGMT 550:  Engineering Management Internship

A three-credit internship which requires participation with a cooperating organization, whether local or distant, involving a well-defined set of tasks. Full-time employment in an appropriate capacity may be utilized for this internship.

3 credits

• This course is a required co or prerequisite for Engineering Management 551.
• More about internship requirements
• Prerequisites: Enrollment in the Master of Engineering Management Program.
• Offered: Fall, Spring, and Summer

EGRMGMT 551: Engineering Management Internship Assessment

This course involves the assessment of a student’s internship experience via a report and oral presentation. The questions and general format of the report and presentation will be provided by the instructor. The report and presentation will be evaluated by the instructor and both must be approved to obtain credit for this course.

3 credits

• Students must have completed or be simultaneously enrolled in Engineering Management 550 which is a course designated for the internship experience.
• More about internship requirements
• Prerequisites: Enrollment in the Master of Engineering Management Program.
• Offered: Fall, Spring, and Summer (Must be completed in student’s final semester)

Please note: 590 courses are pilot courses and are offered on rotational basis.

Explore elective tracks

512: Product Management in High-Tech Companies

In today’s international high-tech business environment, the Product Manager is considered the CEO of their company’s particular product or service. Central to creating customer value are a firm’s product innovations and its portfolio of products and services. It is essential that the Product Manager understands the need to identify and develop strategies that capitalize on the firm’s unique capabilities and provide value to the customer.

In this course, we will explore the entire product management challenge in a way that goes beyond the typical MBA product marketing and brand management course with an emphasis on managing products & services in a high-tech environment. We believe that it is essential that our graduates understand all elements of product management including problem identification, market opportunity analysis, customer needs analysis, product strategy development, technology & product road mapping, product development, competitive analysis, product sales & marketing, brand management, financial management, and product life cycle management. The course places emphasis on developing specific strategies to support new and existing products and to help develop and manage a portfolio of products and services. This engineering management elective will provide an in-depth exposure to the analyses, decisions, and implementation issues relevant to a typical product manager in a high-tech company and help prepare you for your first industry product management opportunity. A successful product manager needs a broad set of skills and this course is the first step in helping you develop those skills. Your new skills will be developed using a mix of individual and team-based assignments, case analysis and presentations, computer simulations and projects.

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• Perform a wide range of analyses involved in managing products and services
• Understand the essential elements of product management in a high-tech environment
• Develop product plans, product strategies, and supporting tactical plans
• Propose and justify marketing plans for a specific product or service
• Understand the interface challenges between the marketing, sales, engineering, operations and management teams
• Develop a strong understanding of the issues central to product management
• Present coherent, concise analysis of business cases

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring Semesters

514: Negotiations and Consultative Selling in Technology

Success in business is dependent upon the ability to positively communicate with and influence others to accomplish a goal. To paraphrase a famous quote by Thomas Watson of IBM on this topic, nothing happens in business until a negotiation is successfully completed or a sale is made. Whether we realize it or not, we are all negotiating or selling in many aspects of our lives. From making a decision that affects internal operations within our company, presenting a proposal to our boss, or closing a sale with a major client, it is important to have a suite of skills that allow us to achieve our objectives. This course covers these two primary areas of influence and communication within a business—negotiations and consultative selling (working collaboratively with others to effectively meet the needs of a target customer). These are both highly dynamic areas of personal impact that focus on one’s abilities to understand a situation and then construct the negotiation or sales process most needed for success in value creation and goal attainment. This course covers the structured processes, theoretical constructs, and practical applications that lead to success in both these areas. The course also explores ethical considerations in both disciplines.

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring semesters

532: Advanced Corporate Finance for Technology-Based Companies

The focus of this course will be on major financial decisions of established technology corporations as well as entrepreneurial ventures. Analytical models and theories will be covered via problems and cases. Specific areas will include asset management, short-term and long-term borrowing, advanced capital budgeting strategies, determination of capital structure, dividend policy, international issues, and mergers and other forms of restructuring.

3 credits

Prerequisites: Enrollment in the Duke Master of Engineering Management Program
Offered: Spring Semester

542: Competitive Strategy in Technology-Based Industries

Why do some ideas succeed in the marketplace, and others fail? The answer often boils down to strategy. This course is designed to teach the elements of competitive strategy with a focus on the special considerations of technology-based companies, with particular emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurial activities in ventures of all sizes. Students will gain an appreciation for the strategic considerations that affect the success of technology-based products in the marketplace through systematic exposure to key concepts in analysis, formulation, and execution of strategic options. The course is structured along the lines that a company or organization would likely follow in the development of a competitive strategy.

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring Semesters

556: Engineering Management Practicum

A practicum provides a real-life view of challenges faced by organizations. Projects at the intersection of engineering and business are chosen. Students work in teams and will conduct a mentored, semester-long project for an organization.

The learning objectives of this course include:

1. Learn how engineering and technology impact organizations and how they are integrated into an organization to achieve desired results
2. Understand, through an experiential environment, how organizations function and the difference between theory and implementation in an organizational setting; and
3. Develop team-based skills in an applied environment and learn how to communicate technical issues to a variety of personnel in an organization.

Practicum topics are announced during the first week of classes and students must apply to be in the courses, with multiple sections covering various projects each semester. More about Duke practicums.

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring Semesters

560: Project Management

Projects are one of the key mechanisms for achieving organizational goals and implementing change, whether it is the design and launch of a new product, the construction of a new building, or the development of a new information system. This course will focus on defining project scope, developing project plans, managing project execution, validating project performance and ensuring project control. Additional topics covered include decision making, project finance, project portfolio selection, and risk management.

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring Semesters

562: Operations Management

Operations management involves planning and controlling the processes used to produce the goods and services provided by an organization. In essence, it is the management of all activities related to doing the actual work of the organization. Managing these processes can be quite challenging—they are often very complex and can involve large numbers of people and facilities, huge volumes of materials and great distances.

Objectives of the course are to:

1. Introduce students to the functional area of operations and increase their awareness of how a firm’s operations interface with the other functional areas of the organization
2. Familiarize students with the various issues and problems that traditionally arise in the management of operations within both manufacturing and service organizations
3. Acquaint students with some of the terminology, modeling, and methodologies that often arise in the handling and resolution of operation issues and problems.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

563: Supply Chain Management

A firm’s supply chain encompasses all of those processes involving the design, manufacturing, and delivery of a product to end-customers. In the last 20 years, a combination of industry innovation, new technologies, and academic research has led to substantial growth in our knowledge and in our ability to manage supply chains. Companies in many sectors have realized both the synergies and the efficiencies that can be gained from solving supply chain problems, and have realized the competitive edge that effective supply chain management provides.

The objectives of this course are two-fold:

1. To develop conceptual and modeling skills, and to apply practical problem-solving tools, applicable to the design and analysis of supply chains
2. Identify how the existence of multiple (distinct) decision-makers in the supply chain can create misaligned incentives that harm supply chain performance, and then understand alternative contract structures and other responses that can help mitigate this effect

3 credits

Offered: Spring Semester

572: Innovation Management in Technology-Based Organizations

This course will take students through a variety of issues related to managing technology and innovation in the context of a technology-based organization. It is about managing know-how and innovation processes as well as creating an organizational culture that fosters and supports innovation. We will study best practices and benchmarks to help students develop their intuition for managing innovation given each unique situation, including; the organization’s culture, and strategy, the employee’s strengths/weaknesses, etc. Learning objectives include:

• Understanding the different processes that affect innovation in a technology-based firm
• How to create a culture of innovation in an organization
• The critical role of champions and
• Key concepts of innovation strategy

3 credits

Offered: Typically Spring and Fall Semesters

574: Commercializing Technology Innovations: Turning Visions into Value

This course is designed to demystify and unify the journey from idea creation to value extraction through the use of concrete tools and real-world exercises. Innovations have many sources (for example, individuals, companies, universities, governments) and many vehicles for commercialization (for example, licensing, new products, enhanced products, and new ventures). Through this course, students will learn to think more broadly about innovation and commercialization options and strategies.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

575: Software Quality Management

This class will introduce students to five different business personas that play a key role in the software development lifecycle. These are customer, software engineer, software release/quality manager, customer support engineer, and general manager. The students will better appreciate the perspectives that each of these personas brings to their role and how that affects the “delivered” quality that customers actually experience. The course will also help students understand how to assess customer business outcomes, expectations and measure customer experience. Finally, the class will provide exposure to current industry practices and include guest speakers who can give real-world examples relevant to software quality management.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

576: Design Thinking and Innovation

The success of established companies and entrepreneurial ventures depends upon their ability to identify customer needs and then develop products and services that meet these needs in an affordable and effective manner. A disciplined design thinking process leads to successful innovations, particularly with regard to value creation and market impact. Starting with an understanding of empathy, ethnography, and interviewing techniques, moving on to the iterative process of defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing, and then developing final designs, this course is a highly engaging opportunity for students to develop a deep set of skills in design thinking and innovation and includes current approaches such as agile development, biodesign, and lean startup.

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring Semesters

578: Designing Customer Experiences in Technology

In a rapidly changing and competitive global market, businesses must address complex cross-discipline questions such as “how do I successfully distinguish my business from competitors?” to remain relevant. Increasingly, the quality of a business’ “user experience” offerings provide the key to securing loyal customer relationships and sustainable market differentiation. Companies such as Apple, Starbucks and Amazon understand that compelling customer experience is contained not only in the physical products they create but also in a system of complementary interactions and services. Effective customer experiences are not created by chance – they are designed. This endeavor requires systematic observation, evaluation, visualization, planning, prototyping and principled iteration to be successful. In this course, students are introduced to foundational design techniques and use case study discussions, readings, and hands-on projects to form an action framework and ‘personal toolkit’ for designing compelling customer experiences. In addition, students flesh out this framework through project-based assignments and presentations applying the principles of design thinking, human factors, design for usability, and interaction design to analyze, create, and present effective customer experience solutions.

3 Credits

Offered: Typically Fall and Spring Semester

579: Using Real-Time Data to Improve Customer Quality Experience

Telemetry is the remote collection of data that is collected and analyzed to turn data into actional insights. For software quality, telemetry is important for its use to drive continuous improvements in product quality and customer experience. The real-time nature of the data and the advent of machine-learning algorithms have set the stage for a new era of adaptive customer experience. Telemetry is a by-product of today’s technology trends like digitization and the Internet of Things, and the class will cover the concepts behind these trends as they affect the global economy and drive changes in customer expectations, value delivery and business modes across industries. Leveraging telemetry requires a solid foundation on data. Therefore, this class will provide a strong understanding of basic concepts such as data structures, database types, big data, data quality, and data security.

3 credits

Offered: Spring Semester

580: Decision Models

Successful management requires the ability to recognize a decision situation, understand its essential features, and make a choice. However, many of these situations—particularly those involving uncertainty and/or complex interactions – may be too difficult to grasp intuitively, and the stakes may be too high to learn by experience. This course introduces spreadsheet modeling, simulation, decision analysis, and optimization to represent and analyze such complex problems. The skills learned in this course are applicable in almost all aspects of business and should be helpful in future courses.

3 credits

Offered: Typically Spring Semester

585: Fundamentals of Data Science in Engineering Management

In this course, students will first learn the fundamentals of data science, including core technical vocabulary and mathematical concepts, through lectures and class discussions. This will include topics such as:

1. Probability through Bayesian inverse probability and maximum likelihood for parameter estimation
2. Binary classification, the ROC Curve and Area Under the Curve, the confusion matrix and choice of proper metrics for evaluating and optimizing classifier performance
3. Linear regression for forecasting, separating signal from Gaussian noise
4. Information measures used in data science, including mutual information, relative entropy (KL divergence), and log loss (cross-entropy)
5. Experimental design, p-values and power calculations
6. The distinct roles of training and test data, using Hoeffding’s inequality to forecast error rates on out-of-sample data

Students will have the opportunity to apply the above concepts to real-world data while developing their own models for probabilistic forecasting.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

587: Data Visualization for Engineering Managers

This course teaches how to use data visualizations to improve communication. We will learn best practices for presenting the kind of discoveries and “calls to action” that are the primary aims of business data analysis. Everyone who completes the course will be able to make beautiful and effective data visualizations.

We will begin by learning about human visual perception, in particular, the science of how the choice of color, form and other design elements can assist in pre-attentive information processing. We will consider the origins of modern data visualization in the pre-computer age, starting with the use of overlay maps, and Galton’s Quincunx and Correlation Diagram.

We will learn to recognize the 60 or so most commonly utilized types of data-visualization metaphor, as well as rules of thumb for which are the most appropriate and effective to apply to different types of data analysis.

Students will learn to create their own visualizations using publicly available data and free software tools. Students are not required or expected to have any prior software experience. The course has no prerequisites.

3 credits

Offered: Spring Semester

590.XX: Special Topics: Managing Product Design: Concept to Realization

Managing Product Design: Concept to Realization is an opportunity for students to gain practical experience creating a business and managing a design team that produces a real product under realistic cost, schedule, and performance constraints. Students will form a semester-long “company” that will create coherent business and technical strategies, and design, build, and demonstrate a functional product prototype. Teams will be assisted by managing external technical resources and receiving feedback and guidance from an advisory board.

Objectives: Provide students “a real-life as possible” end-to-end product design and development management experience with responsibilities in business operations and technical management, spanning conceptual design to detailed design, delivery, and presentation; Opportunity to gain realistic experience building a tangible and functional software and electro-mechanical consumer product under market, technical, schedule, and budgetary constraints; Offer project-based experience directly managing designers and other technical specialists; and Provide students with direct experience in considering and managing “Design-for-X” (DfX) tradeoffs including, cost, manufacturability, repair/reuse, and environmental factors.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

590.XX: Special Topics: Software Engineering Management

Students learn the application of a systematic, disciplined approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software using the Agile manifesto principles. Software engineering management is the discipline that provides knowledge, tools, and methods for managing the software requirements, performing software design, development, test, and maintenance tasks. At the end of this course, students will be able to: Understand the software development life cycle (SDLC), Discern the different methods to manage the SDLC such as: Waterfall, Agile & DevOps, Software Development personas and tips for successful team management, Software Product definitions, Agile Software Development methods with focus: Scrum & Kanban, Build and manage an Agile Software release plan, Use DevOps code life cycle tool for code & version management, Incorporate a release plan within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFE), and software solution metrics & risks. Understanding software management concepts will allow students to be ready to take on responsibilities such as software development team management, project management, Agile development team management, Software Product Manager, or other related job roles in the Information Technology industry. Most importantly, it will provide them with the basis for future senior executive management roles such as CIO, CTO given the critical thinking and decision-making skills in a technology-based setting learned in class.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

590.XX: Special Topics: Digital Transformation

This course will introduce students to a number of topics related to the use of digital technology to drive change and adapt nimbly in enterprise. Students will first examine the primary challenges associated with driving change within organizations and analyze how best-in-class organizations successfully manage change to transform their organizations. Students will explore the role that digital technology is playing in accelerating the need for dynamic and perpetual organization transformation and analyze how best-in-class organizations are successfully leveraging digital technology to transform their enterprise. Finally, students will investigate how the emergence of the low/no code (Citizen Developer) model will become a foundation upon which enterprise agility can be built and analyze how this new software development paradigm will enable hyper-agility within the digital enterprise.

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring Semester

590.XX: Special Topics: Clean Energy Practicum

There is an increasing need for smarter, cleaner Energy Transition decarbonization strategies for global energy generating assets. However, global energy generation and its use by industries and society involves challenging, frequently competing goals for economic GDP per capita growth/societal prosperity alongside environmental stewardship. Critical thinking/analysis skills to solve these challenges requires understanding & applying key engineering, economic, & environmental principles. (“3Es”) 1) Engineering (energy conversion, fossil fuels & cleaner energy technologies) 2) Economics (macroeconomics, financial analysis & incentives) 3) Environmental (GHG emissions, regulations & other impacts ) This practicum course gives students the opportunity to learn these skills through a team based, fossil fuel asset decarbonization project alongside energy industry clients/mentors. In-class activities includes: instructor+guest lectures, project work, case studies & short quizzes. Students collaborate in 3-6 person project teams with periodic review presentations to clients/mentors.

This MEMP technical elective is appropriate for Duke graduate students interested in learning & applying technical/business skills towards energy decarbonization. The course is lighter on theoretical calculation depth than many other Duke grad energy-related courses as this course focuses on developing fundamentals intuition for leaders and applying across practical applications. (i.e. research/analyze data, apply basic 3E principles, estimate energy, economic and environmental outcomes) Skills learned in this course apply to future careers in cleaner/renewable energy/decarbonization/sustainability as: product managers, program managers, consultants, climate-tech entrepreneurs, infrastructure construction managers, or financial analysts.

3 credits

Prerequisites: No prerequisites are required beyond being an enrolled graduate student in: the Masters of Engineering Management Program, another Pratt Engineering Department or the Nicholas School of the Environment. 3Es energy concepts are reviewed in the early part of this course. However, given the technical aspects of Energy Transition/Decarbonization, previous exposure to typical undergraduate courses in physics/chemistry, environmental science or economic principles is helpful.

Offered: Spring Semester

590.XX: Special Topics: Sustainable Products for Green Energy Transitions

This new course offering teaches students how products are designed to ensure that energy transitions for existing and new products can be managed properly and effectively while providing sustainability and profitability for worldwide consumption. This methodology is useful in order to reach the goals established by the WHO (World Health Organization) and supported by the WTO (World Trade Organization) as well as by most country centric governments. Students will also be introduced to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives plus use of carbon credits for driving the next revolution in products for introduction into retail and wholesale markets. This course will provide the student with the extraordinary ability to more fully understand all aspects of sustainably-focused technologies to create products that meet new and existing governmental policies. Teams from the class (and perhaps several teams) may enter the MEMP GCI EXECUTIVE CHALLENGE March 2023 with a distinct advantage by taking this course. The focus of the course will be to provide students with critical thinking skills and the grading will be based upon HW assignments plus a semester long project involving development of products for technology sectors matching the students’ interests.

Although this is a new course offering tailored for the MEMP ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT TRANSITION TRACK, Professor Grune has been teaching in the department since 2005 with a focus on IP and specifically Intellectual Asset Management – how to value Intellectual Property. Professor Grune is a PhD Chemical Engineer with both a undergraduate chemistry and mechanical engineering degree from Duke University (AB Chemistry and BSME). His industrial experience and background include developing the first US based Life Cycle Assessment and ISO 14000 certification for Asea Braun Boveri (ABB) in the early 1990s along with 13 years at IBM-RTP and more than 30 years in product development. He is also a registered US patent agent.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

590.XX: Special Topics: Challenges and Strategies for the Design Thinker and Innovator

Some designs withstand the test of time and survive for hundreds or even thousands of years. Others receive huge up-front investments—hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars—only to fantastically fail, serving as spectacles of technology gone awry. Still other designs resonate in the marketplace to such extent that they become household names, critical to the continued success of major companies and commanding huge ongoing costs to develop their next generations. Many designs embody a target life span, and predictably fail over time. Design team leaders confront a dizzying array of priorities, many dictated by industry standards as well as legal requirements that protect health, safety, and even civil rights. Through case studies and primary sources, this course explores the multifaceted challenges that confront design thinkers and innovators as well as strategies for managers and their teams to support the pursuit of excellence in the design process.

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring Semesters

590.XX: Special Topics: Software Business Management

In today’s world, software is pervasive in most if not all companies. Software business is a commercial activity aimed at producing, buying, and selling software products or services. Well-run software companies are known for their high profit margins. This course will focus on understanding the key success factors for software organizations to drive their portfolio strategy by mapping out monetization models, pricing, vendor management, professional services, development & continuous delivery, road mapping & maintenance.

3 credits

Offered: Spring Semester

591: Independent Study

Students may set up an independent study for a topic of their choosing. It is the responsibility of the student to find a professor that is willing to lead the independent study. Some popular independent studies in the past have included Global Engineering Education, the Duke Smart Home, Duke Virtual Reality, and technology assessment with the Research Triangle Institute.

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring Semesters

 

Note: All Engineering Management course titles begin with “EGRMGMT”

EGRMGMT 510: Marketing

This course examines core concepts in marketing and marketing-oriented management. It develops competence in modern marketing techniques and their application in the design, development, and commercialization of new products and services in rapidly changing markets. The class combines lectures and cases, many of which focus on technology-based products and services. Students learn the frameworks for analyzing market opportunities and product potential. Other topics include consumer behavior, product management, pricing strategies, direct and online selling, branding, channel management, and promotions.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

EGRMGMT 520: Intellectual Property, Business Law, and Entrepreneurship

Intellectual Property, Business Law, and Entrepreneurship provide students with the legal and fundamentals to protect their business ventures and intellectual property. The course is divided into three modules. The first module focuses on the implication of decisions made at the formation of business ventures. The second module focuses on the patent process in which students write their own patents. The third module focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of patents, copyrights, and trade secrets. Other topics include principle-agent relations, governance of small companies, mergers and acquisitions, contract law, patents in foreign countries, and corporate take-overs.

3 credits

Offered: Spring Semester

EGRMGMT 530: Finance in High-Tech Industries

Review basic concepts of financial accounting and finance, emphasizing accounting needed for effective financial analysis. Focus on issues of finance in high-tech industries. Emphases will include project financing, notions of options applied to internal financial analysis, allocation of costs and revenues for new high tech projects, valuing projects and valuing firms when intellectual assets are a significant portion of total level value; corporate control in high tech firms. Finance issues in mergers, acquisitions, and alliances.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

EGRMGMT 540: Management of High-Tech Industries

Management of High Tech Industries is a case-based course that focuses on managerial decision-making and organization building. With an emphasis on professional service firms and high-tech companies, students learn to coordinate and leverage human capital. Tactical, operational, and strategic leadership is explored. Other topics include entrepreneurial decision-making, performance measures, managerial control, product strategies, management of strategic change, and competitive analysis.

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring Semesters

Customize your degree with an elective track

EGRMGMT 512: Product Management in High Tech Companies

In today’s international high-tech business environment, the Product Manager is considered the CEO of their company’s particular product or service. Central to creating customer value are a firm’s product innovations and its portfolio of products and services. The Product Manager must understand the need to identify and develop strategies that capitalize on the firm’s unique capabilities and provide value to the customer.

In this course, we will explore the entire product management challenge that goes beyond the typical MBA product marketing and brand management course with an emphasis on managing products & services in a high-tech environment. We believe that it is essential that our graduates understand all elements of product management, including problem identification, market opportunity analysis, customer needs analysis, product strategy development, technology & product road mapping, product development, competitive analysis, product sales & marketing, brand management, financial management, and product life cycle management. In addition, the course emphasizes developing specific strategies to support new and existing products and help develop and manage a portfolio of products and services. This engineering management elective will provide an in-depth exposure to the analyses, decisions, and implementation issues relevant to a typical product manager in a high-tech company and help prepare you for your first industry product management opportunity. A successful product manager needs a broad set of skills, and this course is the first step in helping you develop those skills. Your new skills will be developed using a mix of individual and team-based assignments, case analysis and presentations, computer simulations and projects.

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• Perform a wide range of analyses involved in managing products and services
• Understand the essential elements of product management in a high-tech environment
• Develop product plans, product strategies, and supporting tactical plans
• Propose and justify marketing plans for a specific product or service
• Understand the interface challenges between the marketing, sales, engineering, operations and management teams
• Develop a strong understanding of the issues central to product management
• Present coherent, concise analysis of business cases

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring Semesters

EGRMGMT 513: Managing Product Development (Previously a 590.XX Course)

How do companies ensure innovative ideas are transformed into a product or service? Irrespective of their size, location, number of employees, revenue margin, or industry segment, all companies transform their innovative strategies into real-world products/services. Some companies have well-defined transformation steps that they call product/service development process; others do whatever it takes without organized planning. But in general, they all go through major iterative phases such as discovery, definition, development, demonstration, qualification, deployment, and life cycle management. Furthermore, some factors impact all these phases, such as the source of funding, people relations, supply chain, design/development tools, time constraints, internal/external regulations, etc. Adequate management of these factors enables the development process to be executed on time and on a budget to meet customer needs and stakeholders’ expectations. This course intends to understand the product/ service/development process elements and the factors influencing the execution of the process.

3 credits

Offered: Spring Semester, occasionally Fall

EGRMGMT 514: Negotiations and Consultative Selling in Technology

Success in business is dependent upon the ability to positively communicate with and influence others to accomplish a goal. To paraphrase a famous quote by Thomas Watson of IBM on this topic, nothing happens in business until a negotiation is successfully completed or a sale is made. Whether we realize it or not, we are all negotiating or selling in many aspects of our lives. From making a decision that affects internal operations within our company, presenting a proposal to our boss, or closing a sale with a major client, it is important to have a suite of skills that allow us to achieve our objectives. This course covers these two primary areas of influence and communication within a business—negotiations and consultative selling (working collaboratively with others to effectively meet the needs of a target customer). These are both highly dynamic areas of personal impact that focus on one’s abilities to understand a situation and then construct the negotiation or sales process most needed for success in value creation and goal attainment. This course covers the structured processes, theoretical constructs, and practical applications that lead to success in both these areas. The course also explores ethical considerations in both disciplines.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester, occasionally Spring

EGRMGMT 532: Advanced Corporate Finance for Technology-Based Companies

The focus of this course will be on the major financial decisions of established technology corporations and entrepreneurial ventures. Analytical models and theories will be covered via problems and cases. Specific areas will include asset management, short-term and long-term borrowing, advanced capital budgeting strategies, determination of capital structure, dividend policy, international issues, and mergers and other forms of restructuring. Prerequisites: enrollment in the Master of Engineering Management Program.

3 credits

Offered: Spring Semester

EGRMGMT 534: Quantitative Financial Analysis for Technology-Driven Investment Decisions

A beginner’s introduction to the most important concepts used in quantitative finance. Students will learn to build practical financial models using MS Excel spreadsheets, and no prior knowledge of finance or MS Excel is assumed. Investment banks, hedge funds, and money managers make buy and sell decisions based on computational models. Computers can and do execute buy and sell orders in a completely automated fashion based on pre-programmed parameters. This course starts with the most basic and most important portfolio and investment models used to evaluate risk and identify profit opportunities. Using Excel, students will learn how to build these models themselves and understand the decision-making inputs used by professional investors. The course has a practical focus: Analyzing prices of stocks, bonds, options and other financial instruments using the types of computationally sophisticated tools in wide use today.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

EGRMGMT 542: Competitive Strategy in Technology-Based Industries

Why do some ideas succeed in the marketplace and others fail? The answer often boils down to strategy. This course is designed to teach the elements of competitive strategy focusing on the special considerations of technology-based companies, with particular emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurial activities in ventures of all sizes. Students will appreciate the strategic considerations that affect the success of technology-based products in the marketplace through systematic exposure to key concepts in the analysis, formulation, and execution of strategic options. The course is structured along the lines that a company or organization would likely follow to develop a competitive strategy.

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring Semesters

EGRMGMT 560: Project Management

Projects are one of the key mechanisms for achieving organizational goals and implementing change, whether it is the design and launch of a new product, the construction of a new building, or the development of a new information system.

This course will focus on defining project scope, developing project plans, managing project execution, validating project performance and ensuring project control. Additional topics covered include decision making, project finance, project portfolio selection and risk management.

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring Semesters

EGRMGMT 562: Operations Management

Operations management involves planning and controlling the processes used to produce the goods and services provided by an organization. In essence, it is the management of all activities related to doing the actual work of the organization. Managing these processes can be quite challenging—they are often very complex and involve large numbers of people and facilities, huge volumes of materials and great distances.

Objectives of the course are to:

1. Introduce students to the functional area of operations and increase their awareness of how a firm’s operations interface with the other functional areas of the organization
2. Familiarize students with the various issues and problems that traditionally arise in the management of operations within both manufacturing and service organizations
3. Acquaint students with some of the terminology, modeling, and methodologies that often arise in handling and resolving operations issues and problems

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

EGRMGMT 563: Supply Chain Management

A firm’s supply chain encompasses all of those processes involving the design, manufacturing, and delivery of a product to the end customer. In the last 20 years, a combination of industry innovation, new technologies, and academic research has led to substantial growth in our knowledge and ability to manage supply chains. Companies in many sectors have realized both the synergies and the efficiencies that can be gained from solving supply chain problems and have realized the competitive edge that effective supply chain management provides.

The objectives of this course are two-fold:

1. To develop conceptual and modeling skills and to provide practical problem-solving tools applicable to the design and analysis of supply chains
2. Identify how the existence of multiple distinct) decision-makers in the supply chain can create misaligned incentives that harm supply chain performance, and then to understand alternative contract structures and other responses that can help mitigate this effect

3 credits

Offered: Spring Semester

EGRMGMT 572: Innovation Management in Technology-Based Organizations

This course takes students through various issues related to managing innovation in the context of a technology-based organization. This includes managing know-how and innovation processes and creating an organizational culture that fosters and supports innovation. Students study best practices and benchmarks but must develop their own approach to managing innovation given each unique situation, including the organizational strategy, the competitive landscape, the strengths/weaknesses of the employees involved, etc. Nonetheless, there are accepted practices and concepts that will help students develop a deeper understanding of this area.

Learning objectives include:

1. Understand the different processes related to innovation in a technology-based firm
2. How to create a culture of innovation in an organization
3. The critical role of champions
4. Key concepts of innovation strategy

3 credits

Offered: Spring Semester

EGRMGMT 574: Commercializing Technology Innovations: Turning Visions into Value

This course is designed to demystify and unify the journey from idea creation to value extraction through concrete tools and real-world exercises.

Innovations have many sources (e.g., individuals, companies, universities, governments) and many vehicles for commercialization (e.g., licensing, new products, enhanced products, and new ventures). Through this course, students will learn to think more broadly about innovation and commercialization options and strategies.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

EGRMGMT 575: Software Quality Management

This class will introduce students to five different business personas that play a key role in the software development lifecycle. These are customer, software engineer, software release/quality manager, customer support engineer, and general manager. The students will better appreciate the perspectives that each persona brings to their role and how that affects the “delivered” quality that customers actually experience. The course will also help students understand how to assess customer business outcomes, expectations and measure customer experience. Finally, the class will provide exposure to current industry practices and include guest speakers who can give real-world examples relevant to software quality management.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

EGRMGMT 576: Design Thinking and Innovation

The success of established companies and entrepreneurial ventures depends upon their ability to identify customer needs and then develop products and services that meet these needs affordably and effectively. A disciplined design thinking process leads to successful innovations, particularly concerning value creation and market impact. Starting with an understanding of empathy, ethnography, and interviewing techniques, moving on to the iterative process of defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing, and then developing final designs, this course is a highly engaging opportunity for students to develop a deep set of skills in design thinking and innovation. It includes current approaches such as agile development, biodesign, and lean startup.

3 credits

Offered: Occasionally Fall Semester

EGRMGMT 578: Designing Customer Experiences in Technology

In a rapidly changing and competitive global market, businesses must address complex cross-discipline questions such as “How do I successfully distinguish my business from competitors?” to remain relevant. Increasingly, the quality of a business’ “user experience” offerings provide the key to securing loyal customer relationships and sustainable market differentiation. Companies such as Apple Computer, Starbucks, and Amazon understand that compelling customer experience is contained not only in the physical products they create but also in a system of complementary interactions and services. Effective customer experiences are not created by chance – they are designed. This endeavor requires systematic observation, evaluation, visualization, planning, prototyping and principled iteration to be successful. In this course, students are introduced to foundational design techniques and use case study discussions, readings, and hands-on projects to form an action framework and ‘personal toolkit’ for designing compelling customer experiences. In addition, students flesh out this framework through project-based assignments and presentations applying the principles of design thinking, human factors, design for usability, and interaction design to analyze, create, and present effective customer experience solutions.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

EGRMGMT 579: Using Real-Time Data to Improve Customer Quality Experience

Telemetry is the remote collection of data that is collected and analyzed to turn data into actional insights. For software quality, telemetry is important for its use to drive continuous improvements in product quality and customer experience. The real-time nature of the data and the advent of machine-learning algorithms have set the stage for a new era of adaptive customer experience. Telemetry is a by-product of today’s technology trends like digitization and the Internet of Things, and the class will cover the concepts behind these trends as they affect the global economy and drive changes in customer expectations, value delivery and business modes across industries. Leveraging telemetry requires a solid foundation on data. Therefore, this class will provide a strong understanding of basic concepts such as data structures, database types, big data, data quality, and data security.

3 credits

Offered: Spring Semester

EGRMGMT 580: Decision Models

Successful management requires the ability to recognize a decision situation, understand its essential features, and make a choice. However, many of these situations – particularly those involving uncertainty and/or complex interactions – may be too difficult to grasp intuitively, and the stakes may be too high to learn by experience. This course introduces spreadsheet modeling, simulation, decision analysis and optimization to represent and analyze complex problems. The skills learned in this course are applicable in almost all aspects of business and should be helpful in future courses.

3 credits

Offered: Fall and Spring Semesters

EGRMGMT 585: Fundamentals of Data Science

In this course, students will first learn the fundamentals of data science, including core technical vocabulary and mathematical concepts, through lectures and class discussions. This will include topics such as; (i) Probability through Bayesian inverse probability and maximum likelihood for parameter estimation, (ii) Binary classification, the ROC Curve and Area Under the Curve, the confusion matrix and choice of proper metrics for evaluating and optimizing classifier performance, (iii) Linear regression for forecasting, separating signal from Gaussian noise, (iv) Information measures used in data science, including mutual information, relative entropy (KL divergence), and log loss (cross-entropy), (v) Experimental design, p-values and power calculations (vi) The distinct roles of training and test data, using Hoeffding’s inequality to forecast error rates on out-of-sample data. Students will have the opportunity to apply the above concepts to real-world data while developing their own models for probabilistic forecasting. Before Fall 2017, this course was listed as “Data Mining.”

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

EGRMGMT 586: New Opportunities in Big Data* (Currently Inactive)

This course is intended for students who have a strong interest in the IT infrastructure of Big Data.

Topics covered include:

1. Advanced data-mining methods now possible in business and research
2. Introduction to software for data-visualization and pattern recognition in Big Data
3. Information Architecture of the Big Data Cloud – Introduction to the latest technologies for distributed data storage, indexing, search, retrieval, and analysis

Limited to a maximum of 20 students.

Prerequisites: 585: Fundamentals of Data Science, or with prior approval of the instructor.

3 credits.

Offered: Spring Semester

EGRMGMT 587: Data Visualization for Engineering Managers

This course teaches how to use data visualizations to improve communication. We will learn best practices for presenting the kind of discoveries and “calls to action” that are the primary aims of business data analysis. Everyone who completes the course will be able to make beautiful and effective data visualizations.

We will begin by learning about human visual perception, in particular, the science of how the choice of color, form and other design elements can assist pre-attentive information processing. We will consider the origins of modern data visualization in the pre-computer age, starting with overlay maps and Galton’s Quincunx and Correlation Diagram.

We will learn to recognize the 60 or so most commonly utilized types of data-visualization metaphor, as well as rules of thumb for which are the most appropriate and effective to apply to different types of data analysis.

Students will learn to create their own visualizations using publicly available data and free software tools. Students are not required or expected to have any prior software experience. The course has no prerequisites.

3 credits

Offered: Spring Semester

EGRMGMT 588: Machine Learning Principles and Applications for Engineering Managers

This course focuses on understanding how machine learning (ML) works and case studies of its successful application to a wide range of problem types, from better forecasting customer behavior to playing Go, to responding appropriately to human speech. Students will learn the basic mathematical principles behind establishing reliable ML performance and have an opportunity to experiment with various ML algorithms and observe how they perform on real-world data. The course does not require any prior programming experience.

3 credits

Offered: Spring Semester

EGRMGMT 590.XX: Managing Product Design

Managing Product Design: Concept to Realization is an opportunity for students to gain practical experience creating a business and managing a design team that produces a real product under realistic cost, schedule, and performance constraints. Students will form a semester-long “company” that will create coherent business and technical strategies, and design, build, and demonstrate a functional product prototype. Teams will be assisted by managing external technical resources and receiving feedback and guidance from an advisory board.

Objectives: Provide students “a real-life as possible” end-to-end product design and development management experience with responsibilities in business operations and technical management, spanning conceptual design to detailed design, delivery, and presentation; Opportunity to gain realistic experience building a tangible and functional software and electro-mechanical consumer product under market, technical, schedule, and budgetary constraints; Offer project-based experience directly managing designers and other technical specialists; and Provide students with direct experience in considering and managing “Design-for-X” (DfX) tradeoffs including, cost, manufacturability, repair/reuse, and environmental factors.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester, occasionally Spring

EGRMGMT 590.XX: Software Engineering Management

Students learn the application of a systematic, disciplined approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software using the Agile manifesto principles. Software engineering management is the discipline that provides knowledge, tools, and methods for managing the software requirements, performing software design, development, test, and maintenance tasks. At the end of this course, students will be able to: Understand the software development life cycle (SDLC), Discern the different methods to manage the SDLC such as: Waterfall, Agile & DevOps, Software Development personas and tips for successful team management, Software Product definitions, Agile Software Development methods with focus: Scrum & Kanban, Build and manage an Agile Software release plan, Use DevOps code life cycle tool for code & version management, Incorporate a release plan within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFE), and software solution metrics & risks. Understanding software management concepts will allow students to be ready to take on responsibilities such as software development team management, project management, Agile development team management, Software Product Manager, or other related job roles in the Information Technology industry. Most importantly, it will provide them with the basis for future senior executive management roles such as CIO, CTO given the critical thinking and decision-making skills in a technology-based setting learned in class.

3 credits

Offered: Fall Semester

EGRMGMT 590.XX: Software Business Management

In today’s world, software is pervasive in most if not all companies. Software business is a commercial activity aimed at producing, buying, and selling software products or services. Well-run software companies are known for their high profit margins. This course will focus on understanding the key success factors for software organizations to drive their portfolio strategy by mapping out monetization models, pricing, vendor management, professional services, development & continuous delivery, road mapping & maintenance.

3 credits

Offered: Spring Semester