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Carnegie Mellon University
H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management
MSIT-MSD Degree
Delivered in partnership with iCarnegie, Inc.
Master of Science in Information Technology Degree
Managing Systems Development Track
MSIT-MSD Degree Description
Unprecedented advances in information technology are bringing fundamental changes to the business landscape. In this rapidly changing environment, technology is no longer solely the responsibility of specialists. Effective managers require knowledge of the core principles underlying information technology, an understanding of emerging industry trends, and the skills to leverage technology successfully. With this foundation, professionals can transform their organizations and their careers.
Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School has designed the unique Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) graduate degree program to provide professionals with this solid foundation, improving their competitive advantage in today's digital world.
The MSIT track focused on Managing Systems Development is an exceptional investment for information technologists who want to enhance their technical knowledge and develop management skills. It offers a distinctive mix of cutting edge technology, management and strategy coursework and provides a cross-functional understanding of information technology from both operational and strategic perspectives.
As an interdisciplinary degree program, the Master of Science in Information Technology draws upon Carnegie Mellon's strengths in technology, innovation and collaboration among University units, including the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management (the graduate school ranked #1 in information technology management from U.S. News and World Report), the School of Computer Science (often ranked #1 in the world), and the world-renowned Software Engineering Institute.
MSIT-MSD Brief Course Descriptions
(current as of April, 2006)
Key:
12 Carnegie Mellon Units = full course
6 Carnegie Mellon Units = half course
95-712 Object Oriented Programming in Java
(12 Carnegie Mellon Units)
This is an intermediate course on object-oriented programming using the Java programming language.
Students learn to use appropriate object-oriented (OO) techniques such as composition, inheritance, and polymorphism. The course emphasizes problem analysis, solution design, documentation, and implementation. Students use commercial software libraries to create software applications. The Java collection classes and I/O classes are used to implement a number of applications. Additional topics include exception handling, Swing, design patterns, and unit testing. Students develop a project in phases during the semester and learn how larger object-oriented programs are organized.
Successful students will gain deep Java and OO programming experience. Specific capabilities include extending the functionality and improving the performance of existing programs, implementing interactive GUIs, designing to requirements, and programming to specification.
Prerequisites: Prior programming experience is expected.
95-703 Database Management
(12 Carnegie Mellon Units)
This course covers the theoretical and practical aspects of database management systems (DBMS). The emphasis is on relational database systems (RDBMS) and database design.
Students gain familiarity with fundamental DBMS concepts and learn to use database software to develop data-intensive applications (of which most modern applications are instances). The course covers fundamental topics include data modeling, database design using normalization theory, relational algebra, SQL, transactions, database security, privacy and integrity. Students are also introduced to advanced topics such as OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) and data warehousing. Students design and implement a project using an RDBMS such as PostgreSQL.
Those successfully completing this course will be qualified to handle small- to medium-size database projects and participate competently in large projects. They will be able to design a database from scratch and write queries against it. They will also be able to evaluate the design of existing databases and improve them.
Prerequisites: Prior programming experience is expected.
95-705 Telecommunications Management
(12 Carnegie Mellon Units)
This course introduces key technical and managerial issues in the effective development and use of telecommunications by organizations.
Students learn the technical, business, and industry fundamentals necessary for effective management at organizations that develop, operate, and/or use telecommunications. These issues are explored in the context of decisions made in areas of developing and deploying business applications, procuring and delivering services, and managing technical personnel and processes. Topics include the underlying technical fundamentals of voice and data networks, the protocols and services built from those fundamentals, industry and regulatory structures and practices, and practical questions that arise from these issues.
Students will gain sufficient understanding of telecommunications technology and industry to make intelligent short-term and long-term business decisions. Students also gain technical depth to manage technical teams effectively.
Prerequisites: None.
95-796 Statistics for IT Managers
(6 Carnegie Mellon Units)
This is an introductory course in data analysis and statistical inference. Throughout the course, students regularly analyze Internet data using a statistical software package such as Minitab.
The course covers three distinct areas: descriptive statistics, fundamentals of statistical inference, and regression analysis. On descriptive statistics, the students learn how to calculate and interpret summary statistical measures to describe raw data. With regard to fundamentals of statistical inferences, the course provides students the background for executing and interpreting hypothesis tests and confidence intervals. Using regression analysis, a widely used statistical methodology, students learn how to analyze data and interpret various parameters at play.
Students will acquire the skills that are necessary in management positions to analyze and interpret data using basic statistical tools.
Prerequisites: None
95-760 Decision Making Under Uncertainty
(6 Carnegie Mellon Units)
This course covers a range of quantitative methods for making practical decisions under conditions where "full information" is not available.
Students gain experience in the art of mathematical modeling of business and social systems. The course emphasizes "end user modeling" techniques; some of the techniques can be extended to consider construction of more general decision support systems. The methods covered in the course include forecasting, decision analysis, queuing theory, Monte Carlo simulation, and project management. Some deterministic optimization methods are also covered.
Upon completing the course, students will be equipped make sound judgments in decision making processes in management roles.
Prerequisites: 95-796 Statistics for IT Managers
95-771 Algorithms and Data Structures for Information Processing
(12 Carnegie Mellon Units)
This course covers fundamental topics of data structures and algorithms for information processing.
Students learn how to evaluate, select, and use software libraries that implement a variety of algorithms and data structures. Students also learn some of the key principles for designing algorithms and data structures and about the decision making involved.
Successful students will be qualified to participate in project design and software development teams. This course equips students to participate in all phases of software development and design. It also provides the skills to implement special purpose libraries and update legacy code for better size, efficiency and extensibility.
Prerequisites: 95-712 Object-Oriented Programming in Java
Students enrolled in the course must have a prior background in programming (course work or practical experience).
It should be noted that this is not a C++ or Java programming course. With the exception of some initial background information, the course does not focus on the programming language itself. Students who have not previously studied C++ or Java are responsible for acquiring any additional required skills outside of class. Students without adequate programming preparation should consider taking an additional programming course as a pre-requisite to this course.
95-892 Decision Support Systems
(12 Carnegie Mellon Units)
This course covers the design, development, and implementation of decision support systems (DSS) and how these systems can be applied to solve current business problems.
The course emphasizes data management for DSS and covers fundamental data management building blocks in areas such as data warehousing and data mining. Students will explore the role of these building blocks in a variety of modern enterprise business contexts, such as web personalization and customer relationship management (CRM). Topics covered include data modeling for DSS, extraction/transformation/load (ETL), business intelligence (BI), and data mining techniques (for example, classification and association). Students gain experience in a variety of enabling technologies for DSS, including data warehousing tools, data mining tools, and application server platforms. Students design, develop, and implement a DSS in a group project.
Students will be prepared to design and implement decision support systems and to use these systems in the effective management of an organization.
Prerequisites: 95-703 Database Management
95-893 Software Project Management
(12 Carnegie Mellon Units)
This course focuses on the organizational and management aspects of software projects. It covers techniques for project planning, scheduling, costing, organization, and the application of these techniques to multi-person projects and creating relevant project artifacts.
Students learn to identify key elements involved in managing a project and organize a project into manageable parts and components, including formulation and control of project schedules and budgets. Effective tools for reporting and oversight are also discussed. Project documentation is also emphasized, with each project document considered in terms of its use for building and maintaining relationships with all project stakeholders-end users, various levels of user and technical management, and the project team itself.
Successful students will be prepared to effectively manage complex software projects that involve multi-person teams.
Prerequisites: None.
95-894 Object Oriented Software Analysis & Design
(12 Carnegie Mellon Units)
This course examines the reasons for the inherent complexity of software construction and presents structured methods to deal effectively with them.
Topics for the course include requirements analysis, use case modeling, design patterns, problem formulation, decomposition (analysis) and solution building (design). The use of CASE tools is also covered. These concepts and practices are put in context through the development of a course-long software project.
Students will be able to employ object-oriented design and analysis techniques effectively to develop software systems using modern software engineering principles and generate documents required in each phase of the software development process.
Prerequisites: Knowledge of Database Design and Object-Oriented Programming.
95-702 Distributed Object Technologies
(12 Carnegie Mellon Units)
This course teaches the principles, theory and the technologies underlying distributed computing and systems design.
The course has three main objectives. First, students are introduced to the principles of distributed computing and the design of distributed systems. Second, students exercise these principles in the context of real applications by using one or more distributed technologies such as CORBA, RMI, XML, SOAP, Web services, and J2EE/.Net-based application servers. Third, students gain the ability to analyze, design, evaluate and recommend distributed computing solutions in response to business problems.
Upon completing the course, students will be prepared to design and implement new distributed systems using contemporary technologies and to evaluate existing systems.
Prerequisites: 95-712 Object Oriented Programming in Java
95-705 Telecommunications Management
95-703 Database Management
95-806 Managing Service Organizations
(6 Carnegie Mellon Units)
Service organizations (broadly defined, and whether in business or government) require certain capabilities to be effective in their strategies and tactics, and efficient in their operations. This course covers the ideas, principles, and processes that underpin those capabilities
Topics for the course include the nature and characteristics of services and the peculiar constraints they impose on delivery and support systems as well as existing classifications of services and the need to modify them to account for new types of services enabled by digital technologies and networks. The course also covers service composition and how an organization can provide value to customers by configuring, packaging and delivering services. Students will understand the issues involved in managing customer relationships within the construct of service level agreements (SLA) and contracts, and how interactions with users drive perceptions of service quality. Students will learn how elemental attributes of service quality, such as availability and capacity, drive the allocation of resources and will learn approaches and methods to improve service availability, manage demand, and exploit capacity.
The course examines why service recovery is a critical capability and how various factors determine the organization's ability to restore committed levels of service quality in the event of deviations, disruptions, and disasters. Process frameworks (such as ITIL), standards, technologies, and best practices adopted by successful service organizations worldwide will also be discussed.
Successful students will be prepared to manage a service organization's relationships with customers and improve its ability to maintain service levels and recover from disruptions.
Prerequisites: None.
95-831 Enterprise Architectures
(6 Carnegie Mellon Units)
This course examines how enterprise architectures combine business elements (strategic directions and business drivers, information technology elements, standards, technology capabilities, and trends) to provide a blueprint that both enables and constrains technology management decisions by combining business elements (such as strategic directions and business drivers) with information technology elements (such as standards, technology capabilities and trends).
The course covers four inter-related architectures that constitute the enterprise architecture: Business Architecture, Data Architecture, Application Architecture, and Technology Architecture. Students will understand how these architectures provide definitions at different levels of abstraction and detail the framework for IT governance and implementation. Topics in the course include the definition of an enterprise architecture, the analysis and design of enterprise architectures, technology architectures (application and data), and architecture integration.
Students will also be able to analyze the quality of existing architectures and recommend improvements.
Prerequisites: 95-771 Algorithms and Data Structures for Information Processing
95-705 Telecommunications Management
95-703 Database Management
95-752 Information Security Management
(12 Carnegie Mellon Units)
This course is concerned with fundamental principles of computer security from the perspective of organizational management.
The course covers privacy concerns, secrecy issues, operational security, physical security, hardware security, software security, communications security, and data security. Students will learn how to design and create disaster recovery plans, computer policies and standards, system security architectures and physical security controls. Legal aspects of computer security will be covered as well as auditing in a secured environment and managing as a day-to-day security administrator.
Upon completing the course, students will be equipped to think critically through various issues faced by security managers.
Prerequisites: Students should have a background in computer basics, business management, and information systems management.
95-730 E-business Technology and Management
(12 Carnegie Mellon Units)
The Internet, in general, and the World Wide Web, in particular, have had a dramatic impact on how individuals and organizations transact goods and services. It has given rise to new organizational forms (such as virtual organizations) and markets which feature electronic transaction models in new categories of goods and services (for example, order placement and fulfillment for digital products on information networks). These developments have potentially profound implications for society and raise several legal and policy issues that are as yet largely unresolved (such as copyright and taxation).
This is an introductory course on the technologies, business models, and policy issues facing e-business. The course provides an overview of e-business applications in the retail, government and health sectors (as illustrations) and discusses the different business models underlying these applications. Topics include the key technologies enabling electronic commerce on the Internet, payment systems, authentication, security and privacy. The course also provides an overview of key legal and policy issues such as privacy, content selection and rating, intellectual property rights, and taxation.
Students will gain an understanding of key technological, business and legal issues underlying electronic commerce and of the ways in which these issues interact, allowing them to manage e-business development and deployment effectively in their organizations.
Prerequisites: 95-712 Object Oriented Programming in Java
95-705 Telecommunications Management
95-703 Database Management
MSIT-MSD Courses at a Glance
| 95-712 Object Oriented Programming in Java | 12 | Prior programming experience |
| 95-703 Database Management | 12 | Prior programming experience |
| 95-705 Telecommunications Management | 12 | None |
| 95-796 Statistics for IT Managers | 6 | None |
| 95-760 Decision Making Under Uncertainty | 6 | 95-796 |
| 95-771 Algorithms and Data Structures for Information Processing | 12 | 95-712 plus prior programming background (see notes) |
| 95-892 Decision Support Systems | 12 | 95-703 |
| 95-893 Software Project Management | 12 | None |
| 95-894 Object Oriented Software Analysis & Design | 12 | Knowledge of database design and object-oriented programming |
| 95-702 Distributed Object Technologies | 12 | 95-712, 95-705, 95-703 |
| 95-806 Managing Service Organizations | 6 | None |
| 95-831 Enterprise Architectures | 6 | 95-771, 95-705, 95-703 |
| 95-752 Information Security Management | 12 | Background in computer basics, business management, and information systems management |
| 95-730 E-business Technology and Management | 12 | 95-712, 95-705, 95-703 |
| TOTAL | 144 |
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