How university professors teach project management for information systems

Reif, Harry L.; Mitri, Michel

doi:10.1145/1076211.1076249

Cited by 27 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…The ACM's 2002 recommendations for Information Systems (IS) [2] include an entire course on project management. However, Reif and Mitri's survey [10] of over 200 IS professors found that the recommended learning units are typically only partially covered across an array of different courses. Just 25% of IS respondents reported that their university offers an entire course on software project management.…”

Section: Rationalementioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a graduate software project management degree

Dannelly

Garrison

2008

Proceedings of the 46th Annual Southeast Regional Conference on XX

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The shortcomings of the software development industry are well documented and familiar to all computer science faculty members. Many software projects fail to deliver products with adequate functionality or are completed over budget and well past the original expected delivery date. The causes of these problems are also well documented and well known. Most often the causes of software project failure are not related to incompetency among the software developers, but inadequate skills among the project managers. Recently, several universities have begun offering management degree programs in their engineering colleges. Most graduate software engineering programs now include at least some coursework in project management. Our university has taken a different approach to producing graduate software project managers. We have developed a Software Project Management option within our College of Business's MBA program. This paper describes the skills we believe necessary for software project managers and how we cover these skills through a combination of computer science and business courses. We hope this paper will be helpful to educators developing new degree programs and promote discussion about the value of bridging the gap between the two distant academic worlds of engineering and business. RATIONALETo increase the success of software projects, these projects need managers who are knowledgeable about software engineering, management, and general business. While a manager with a business degree is more likely to focus on return on investment and time to market, a manager with a computing degree is more likely to focus on software efficiency and reliability. We believe both types of factors are important to software project success. A manager of software projects, who is effective in the real world where money matters, must understand the importance of software engineering metrics such as testing coverage, and business metrics such as market share. Thus, we believe that degree programs seeking to develop software project management skills must include both software engineering and business coursework.It is accepted that the failure rate of software projects is far too high. Defining software project success as a project that delivers a product on time, within budget, and containing all specified features or services, the Standish Group reported in 1994 an industry success rate of just 16% [11]. By 2004 their annual report showed a success rate that had improved to only 29% [12]. While the Standish Group's statistics have been called in question and the true rate of success is likely somewhat higher [7], everyone can agree that there is ample room for improvement in our rate of project success.Much of software engineering education has focused on product success rather than project success. As Baccarini [3] points out, the two are different. Product success depends on satisfying the user, the organization, and other stakeholders. Project success depends on meeting deadlines, staying within budget, meeting quality goal...

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Section: Rationalementioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a graduate software project management degree

Dannelly

Garrison

2008

Proceedings of the 46th Annual Southeast Regional Conference on XX

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“…These academic experiences alone are not sufficient for preparing Software Engineering students for productive careers [19]. Project managers require "a combination of technical, human resources, and management skills coupled with on-the-job experience" [22].…”

Section: Teaching the "Real World"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dawson [9] has vividly summarized several of these skills and has discussed their simulation in software engineering coursework. Reif and Mitri [22] also draw the distinction between traditional classroom training and practical experience with "informal" knowledge. They postulate that senior managers "construct mental models for the project, problems, and opportunities under investigation.…”

Section: Teaching the "Real World"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributed development

Richardson

Milewski

Mullick

et al. 2006

Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Software Engineering

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The Global Studio Project integrated the work of Software Engineering students spread across four countries into a single project and represented, for most of the students, their first major "real-world" development experience. Interviews indicated that the major areas of learning were informal skills that included learning to establish and work effectively within a team, learning how to react quickly to frequent changes in requirements, architecture and organization, and learning to manage and optimize communications. Since all these skills require rapid reaction to unpredictable factors, we view them as improvisation and discuss the role of experiential education in facilitating improvisation.

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“…The need to reexamine how project managers are educated and trained cannot be overemphasized in light of emergent scholarship in the area of project management pedagogy (Atkinson, 2008; Berggren & Söderlund, 2008; Reif & Mitri, 2005; Rodriguez, Sicilia, Cuadrado‐Gallego, & Pfahl, 2006; Wearne, 2008). One such area, which appears to have been a focus of interest of scholars, has been in the area of the experiences of project management students (Ojiako, Chipulu, Ashleigh, & Maguire, in press) and, in particular, how virtual learning environments (VLEs) impact on this experience (Del Corso, Ovcin, & Morrone, 2005; Friedman & Deek, 2003; Hingorani, Sankar, & Kramer, 1998; Regueras, Verdu, Munoz, Perez, de Castro, & Verdu, 2009; Rodriguez et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%