TECHNOLOGY-RELATED COURSES:
- Digital Disruption – taught by Alejandro Danylyszyn (USA), a leader in Deloitte Digital in San Francisco, has 25 years of experience in systems integration, program management and enterprise architecture.
In this course, we will explore the forces driving disruption in today’s business environment (e.g., accelerated pace of technology innovation, changes in consumer behavior and expectations, new business and engagements models, etc.), work through a framework to discover opportunities for disruption in an enterprise (i.e., asset/system/ecosystem analysis, ten types of innovation) and define transformation opportunities via digital agility (i.e., imagine, deliver, and run iterations).
- IT Strategies – taught by Dr. McKeen (Canada), Professor Emeritus, the Smith School of Business, Queen’s University
The course covers a range of tools, concepts and frameworks that have proven effective for senior IT managers and CIOs in the pursuit of maximizing the return from their IT investment. The course is especially valuable for anyone interested in becoming a CIO or a consultant as a career.
The course examines the IT management challenges faced by today’s organizations and explores the IT strategies that are used to address these challenges. We will examine the unique role of the CIO, the structure of the IT organization, and the various ways of aligning IT to the business. Effective IT strategy consists of a set of processes to enable the CIO to lead, plan, invest, develop and manage IT assets in alignment with overall business objectives.
The course blends lectures, case analysis, and in-class exercises to reinforce participant understanding of the various theories and frameworks and to highlight different IT management challenges and approaches.
- Product Management in IT/high tech – taught by Scott Sehlhorst (USA), Product Management and Strategy consultant at Tyner Blain since 2005, 27 years experience in engineering, software, high-tech products
The course in product management and strategy is designed to provide several key skills and perspectives at the different levels of product management thinking:
- Product strategy – identifying the key investments for your company, how to focus in market selection, and definitions of success which drive activity throughout the organization.
- Product management – identifying specifically which problems you need to solve to meet market needs and compete effectively.
- Product ownership – how to represent the goals in such a way that development / engineering teams create something which meets the needs (build the right product).
- Emerging Technologies – taught by Alexander Lang (Germany), founder and CEO of IMAN Solutions GmbH, Assistant Professor at the Technical University of Munich, Technical University of Cologne
The objective of this course is to help students develop a strong conceptual foundation for managing technological innovation. It introduces concepts and frameworks for analyzing how companies can create, commercialize and capture value from technology-based products and services. The course is designed for professionals with technical education who are involved (or interested) in the development, acquisition, and/or marketing of new technologies. The focus is on strategic technology management issues rather than on the specific details of any particular technology.
Program participants are expected to:
- become familiar with the theories, terminology and practice associated with technology and innovation management;
- develop the ability to analyze situations within the context of technology and innovation;
- be able to apply the concepts of technology and innovation in the evaluation of specific situations.
Topics covered include:
- technological change and how it affects competition between new and existing firms;
- strategies to capture value from technological innovation; and
- how to create, manage and sustain an innovative organization.
- Software Architecture for Managers – taught by Matthew Bass (USA), a member of the core faculty of Carnegie Mellon’s Master of Software Engineering professional programs
This course teaches a structured approach for realizing a system that supports the intended business goals. While realizing the intended functionality is important, it is often the extent to which the system supports or inhibits additional properties such as scalability, reliability, modifiability, and security that make the difference between success and failure. Traditional approaches miss this fact, paying only cursory attention to these properties resulting in systems that are brittle or unstable, lack the desired performance or throughput, or are difficult and expensive to evolve and maintain.
While it can be clear that supporting multiple markets implies that the system is flexible, or increasing the user base relies on the scalability of the system many things have to happen to realize these properties. The organization must be set up in a way that:
- Understands what kinds of requirements are architecturally significant
- Recognizes the architectural requirements implied by the business objectives
- Articulates these requirements in a way that is actionable and in some sense “testable”
- Understands the relationship between technical decisions and these requirements
- Be able to determine the business impact of technical tradeoffs
- Refines both business objectives and technical decisions as needed to maintain alignment
- Appropriately documents architectural decisions and rationale in order to maintain traceability
By the end of this course participants should be able to:
- Recognize architecturally significant requirements
- Specify actionable architectural requirements
- Plan architectural activities
- Execute the architectural plan in a way that maintains alignment between the strategic objectives and the system that is being built
- Technological Entrepreneurship and Product Development (elective) – taught by Denis Dovgopoliy (Ukraine), managing partner of GrowthUP Group, as well as co-founder and president of the GrowthUP Accelerator, which focuses on acceleration and investment in Eastern European startups looking to enter the global market
The purpose of the course is to:
(mindset) enhance participants’ entrepreneurial and problem solving mindsets
(skillset) help participants better structure enterpreneurial projects, present projects and communicate about their projects with external parties (clients, partners, channels, scientists, etc)
(toolset) provide a methodolody of constructing a successful technological product
The course has a form of a facilitated workshop and entails a lot of group work. Participants in groups of 5 have to come up with a problem they want to solve and a technological product that can solve the problem, and simulate the work of a team starting a company based on this product.
- Methods in Requirements Engeneering (elective) – taught by Mel Rosso-Llopart (USA), professor at Carnegie Mellon University
The course covers topics in requirements engineering needed to decide what to design to meet stakeholder and business needs. The course begins with an introduction to requirements theory that covers the technical and behavioral dimensions of early design considerations. The second and third parts of the course cover two popular methods for identifying, codifying, and analyzing requirements, including a special lesson on generating requirements through structured creativity.
BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT COURSES:
- Management Decision Making Toolbox – taught by Mychailo Wynnycky (Ukraine/Canada), D. (Cambridge), management thinker and lecturer, former Director of Doctoral School at Kyiv-Mohyla National Academy.
The Management Decision Making Toolbox course addresses the issue of how management decisions are made, referencing both strategic and tactical decision making inside companies, and interactions between external service providers and decision makers within client companies. The focus will be on understanding the tools, paradigms (models of thinking), personal styles, and processes that are used to make major decisions.
We explore this in the context of daily decisions made by business executives and entrepreneurs – including both their strategic decision making models, and day-to-day management styles. Our focus is on the way executives approach issues, the accepted ways in which they handle uncertainty, mitigate risk, and create outcomes that address the needs of the business. Throughout the course we will examine the decision making process from the perspective of different departments: marketing, sales, corporate planning, production, financing, etc. However, our primary task will be to teach participants to affect the decision making process, and to understand how to modify their own communicative messages based on the entrepreneurial/managerial environment that they face.
- Strategic Marketing – taught by Joe Pons (Spain), PhD, founder of Axioma Marketing Consultants, lecturer at IESE International Graduate School of Management in Barcelona, IEDC – Bled School of Management, IAE in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Instituto Internacional San Telmo in Seville, Spain
The course consists of an intensive case studies’ review. Throughout the discussion of cases we introduce basic frameworks that will improve the quality of making and implementing strategic marketing decisions.
- Strategic Planning and Project Management – taught by Serhiy Kovela (UK/Ukraine), PhD, MBA, CITP, lecturer at Kingston Business School in London, a scholar with extensive experience in business IT and a practitioner with expertise in delivering database-driven business software projects.
This module introduces the concepts of project management and strategic planning with an emphasis on business related tasks. The initial focus is on project complexity and project management as a capability that must be linked strongly to one’s organisational strategy. This is then followed by a close look at strategic thinking, toolkit, and planning process enabling the identification of rational broad strategic scenarios for an organisation. Finally, the module examines the principles governing the composition of project portfolios underpinning the implementation of one’s organisational strategy.
By linking project complexity to the need to think and manage organisation and projects strategically the module presents a holistic view on running one’s business in an efficient and sustainable manner. Central element of this philosophy is strategic planning as a tool enabling to set the correct context for the subsequent selection of projects the organisation is going to engage in, therefore the assignment is going to be focused on the strategic planning practice.
- Sales Management – taught by Mychailo Wynnycky (Ukraine/Canada), Ph.D. (Cambridge), management thinker and lecturer, former Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Lava Computer Mfg Inc. in Toronto, Canada (7 years)
This course exposes program participants to the art of sales. Communication and persuasion skills are practiced in a field environment, followed by a reflexive discussion. The in-class portion of the course is build upon a practical sales experience “in the field” by exposing participants to basic sales management skills. Two key management issues are addressed in detail:
- Key Account identification, decision-making unit penetration, and relationship management;
- Sales force structure (including salesperson typologies), incentive programs, and typical organizational structures for OEM or outsourcing sales tasks.
- Introduction to Finance – taught by Mykhaylo Salo, COO, managing Partner at Romexsoft, former Financial Director of LvBS and of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU)
This is an introductory course in finance. The course discusses concepts and decisions in financial management.The course introduces:
- fundamental concepts of accounting, will explain financial statements and ratio analysis
- budgeting in a company, cost behavior and CVP analysis
- time value of money and capital budgets decision making tools
Final session will summarize knowledge gained during the course and we will work on the case that has all the components of decision making covered during the previous sessions.
Also you will have an opportunity to present your project ideas and we will discuss the financial part of your projects and will point-out important parts you will have to work on for your diploma.
- Corporate Finance – taught by Basil Kalymon, former professor of finance at the Ivey Business School (Canada), Harvard Business School and University of California
The focus of this corporate finance segment is on the issues raised by financial transactions by entrepreneurial corporations. The basic concepts applied are those previously learned in the first module on finance and accounting with the modifications required to recognize the complexity of entrepreneurial developing country issues. In particular, we concentrate on becoming familiar with
- the issue of valuations in the context of acquisitions and financing.
- the sources of funds used by firms. Class sessions involve lecture sessions, as well as case discussions.
- Management Methods and Leadership, including Management 3.0 workshop – taught by Daniel Lewis, CEO of Bright Leadership (UK), has over 30 years’ experience in global companies, including Nestlé, General Motors, SABMiller, and Heineken
The course creates an understanding of performance management techniques as well as inspirational leadership techniques. Each delegate has an opportunity to explore his/her own skills level in a number of personal effective areas (e.g. dealing with conflict, assertiveness, leadership style etc.) and raise self-awareness in these, providing self-development opportunities. This forms the basis for effectively leading others, and tools are provided so that participants have a greater understanding of important topics such as developing high performing teams, staff development and harnessing diversity. The module equips participants to be more confident in leading and managing others in a high technology environment. Whereas, the licensed workshop on Management 3.0 is built on Jurgen Appelo’s Management 3.0 and Managing for Happiness works.
- New Business Models for Business Creation (elective) – taught by João Perre Viana (Portugal), MBA, lecturer on Entrepreneurship at EADA Business School (Barcelona, Spain)
By the end of this course, participants:
- With a combination of theory and practice, fun and learning by doing, understand the big picture of business model creation and gain a deep insight into the nature of business models
- Are able to describe traditional and bleeding-edge models and their dynamics, innovation techniques
- Are able to position business models within an intensely competitive landscape
Know how to lead the redesign of their own organizations’ business models
- Law in IT (elective) – taught by Olga Belyakova (Ukraine), Partner | Corporate/Commercial, IT, CMS Cameron McKenna
This course navigates participants through some key legal issues which are essential to effectively running an IT/technological business in Ukraine. The topics to be covered are specifically focused on structuring of an IT/technological business and formalising relations with partners, employees and effective methods of protection of created IP objects. Efficient understanding of each of these areas is enhanced through lectures, interactive exercises, case studies and is supported by ‘war’ stories.
- Organizational Development and Change Management (elective) – taught by Andriy Rozhdestvensky (Ukraine), Head of the Leadership Center at the Ukrainian Catholic University, former HR director of Oschadbank (30+K people)
- As a result of the course participants:
- develop a holistic view on a business organization;
- understand how organizational issues influence business processes;
- know the tools for leading change;
- are able to build a development plan for their organization;
- increase their knowledge of motivational concepts and group dynamic.
- Consultancy Practice (elective) – taught by Serhiy Kovela (UK/Ukraine), PhD, MBA, CITP, lecturer at Kingston Business School in London, a scholar with extensive experience in business IT and a practitioner with expertise in delivering database-driven business software projects
Course aims:
- to help participants develop an understanding of the management consulting industry from the client’s perspective, including the reasons why organisations hire consultants, how they choose between competing firms and how they can extract better value from the consultants with whom they work
- to help participants develop an understanding of the strategic issues facing consulting firms
- to help participants develop an understanding of the consulting process in practice, including the tools and techniques used by consultants, managing projects and clients and handling problems
- Brand Management (elective) – taught by Olena Maltseva (Ukraine), PhD, marketing lecturer at LvBS and kmbs, former CEO of “Companion Group”
The course gives participants a vision and tools for building highly capitalized brands, and in particular for developing an effective brand strategy.
SOFT SKILLS WORKSHOP:
- The “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” (global licensed workhop) – facilitated by Anastasiya Markuts, MSTM Academic Director and former Director of FranklinCovey in Ukraine (6 years)
- Emotional Intelligence – facilitated by Yaroslava Butenko, a business trainer since 1997 года, practicing psychoanalyst since 2010, Master of Psychoanalysis (Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, France), MBA, PhD candidate
- Effective Presentations – facilitated by Anastasiya Markuts, MSTM Academic Director and former Director of FranklinCovey in Ukraine (6 years)
