MS in Software Engineering, Development Management Track Student

Wondering if a Carnegie Mellon degree is right for you? Read about our students' experiences through the MS in Software Engineering, Development Track program.

	Rom is a second year grad student and Software Engineer at Qualcomm. He is a martial arts practitioner, loves to spend time with his kids and enjoys walking on the beach at sunset.
	Sirisha is a Software Engineer at FactSet Inc in Connecticut and a first-year grad student at Carnegie Mellon West.

Getting Pushed Out of My Comfort Zone

Hi all,

Happy New Year 2008! So Foundations has ended and I move onward to a whole new semester, a new team and a whole new set of topics to learn. I’m currently in the Requirements course, semester two of the MS Software Engineering program. One of the most daunting things about starting a new semester for me was getting a whole new team. I had finally gotten used to the old team, made good friends with them, figured out the way they work and their time schedules and it was time to rotate and get a new team. At first I was annoyed and scared to try to get along with three new people but as I got to know these guys and started working with them, I understood what Carnegie Mellon was trying to do. They are trying to force us into uncomfortable situations, placing us slightly out of our comfort zone to make us grow. It’s been great getting to know these guys. Why had they chosen Carnegie Mellon West? Where did they work? What did they do, what technologies do they work on? How are things done at their work place? Every company is similar and yet also very different. Finally, you also realize that every person has such different strengths and by meeting a whole set of people; you are gleaning the best of everyone. It’s also a great networking opportunity.

Another thing about this semester I am starting to learn is that there are a lot of tasks to do, a lot of time to do them, but the time is not structured for you! We have basically 6 weeks that we need to divide and schedule and create milestones for ourselves. While this is a great way of learning time management, I’m also a bit nervous to see if we’ll finish our tasks on time! I’m sure we will, we are keeping to our schedule so far.

And lastly, something very important to note about this class is the introduction of team roles. In the last class, we each had informal roles that we created and kept. There was someone who’d take minutes and send out live meeting invites and the other who’d make sure things are done. But everyone did all jobs and nothing was formally set. In this class, we had to divide up official team roles, such as team leader, QA manager, planning manager, etc, among ourselves. We needed to learn what each of the roles meant and we have to rotate the jobs as the semester progresses. I was immediately excited to actually learn about the various roles but again, I was also a bit apprehensive about doing some of the positions. Most of my team members have already been one or the other at their jobs-each has more experience in industry than me!

For me, I knew the most challenging role for me would be the role of team lead for two reasons - the very fact that we don’t know each other that well yet and I knew some of them were team leads at their work right now! So in keeping with the theme at Carnegie Mellon, I picked the one that challenged me the most. Pushing myself into the team lead role and taking my teammates advice on some things has been very helpful so far. It is making me voice all my opinions, making me learn what’s due etc, learn to run meetings, and many more. I still have a few weeks left in this role and I’ll let you know how it all goes.

So that’s all for now, hope this has helped you a bit, and I’ll talk to you in a few weeks!

posted by Sirisha @ 10:05 AM  0 comments

The Gathering

We started on Saturday with breakfast as people were arriving: we focused our discussion mostly on break and vacation and how we were all tired, but as Martin Griss (our Associate Dean for Education) put it: this is the last stretch before graduation, we have to hang in there and make the most out of our last two semesters.

While we were chatting, Martin Radley (one of our faculty members in the DM track) asked around for volunteers. I volunteered along with 3 other students not knowing what we were getting into: he handed us scripts with lines we were supposed to say during a little play and a Starbucks gift card to thank us (yay!). Once we were about to start, we got handed hats to choose from, somehow I wound up being the last one to choose and having to wear the shiny purple hat (I hope nobody took pictures – we all had a really good laugh).

The play was intertwined with discussions about being a change agent and what kind of techniques we can apply at work to initiate change. I recognized myself in a few of the situations we depicted and I wished I had known all of what we talked about a few years ago. The discussion was very interesting and we got to hear experiences from classmates about what they tried to implement, and how they succeeded or failed

Once we were done, Todd Sedano (Director of the Software Engineering program) arrived to tell us his little baby girl was born the night before and he couldn’t join us for the gathering. But he brought us some chocolate cigars and we all got to congratulate him.

After lunch, we had a workshop about professional presentations: we were shown a video of somebody presenting slides during a conference and asked to analyze several aspects of his presentation. The presentation was all about “chicken” (this is the only word he said), but it was nicely presented, and it really helped in showing us that a good presentation is not only about what you say but also how you say it.

We then had a little workshop about patterns: we were put together in teams and had to figure out what kind of patterns we wanted to apply in order to resolve some of our work issues. It was a lot of fun hearing other people’s work horror stories (well maybe not that bad), and trying to figure out how we should resolve the problems: should we take the team out to lunch or organize a brown bag session? Once we were done, each team presented their problem and what kind of patterns they decided to apply. Oddly enough, most of us chose to take the team out for food…

Once the workshop was done we had a breathing and light exercise class. One thing that’s great about Carnegie Mellon West is that it takes a holistic approach when viewing your career and education – and exercise is just as important to your well-being and career as learning code is. It was fun to look at each other struggling to achieve poses that look so simple. Then our guest speaker came in to give a presentation about the culture of change at Yahoo. He had a lot of experience to relate about how they went in trying to push for changes, from Perl to PHP, from PHP3 to PHP4… And it seems like every time they tried something new nothing quite worked like it should have but they keep on learning and trying different ways of changing methodologies, tools… Overall, I think Yahoo is on the right track and it sounded like a really nice place to work at.

It was finally time for dinner (more food, yeah). My group went to a Cascal, a tapas bar on Castro Street: I was at the table with Martin Griss and we got to talk about life, where the industry is headed, and the climate in the various parts of the world we all come from (that was the weekend of the storm in Silicon Valley) while enjoying the delicious food.

The following day, same ritual: we ate breakfast while people were arriving. Then we had a panel discussion about the future of the industry: several professors told us what they thought was going to happen after all these years of being part of the industry: from the rise of embedded systems (phones, toys, MP3 players…) and software as a service to the changes caused by the advent of emerging countries. Dean Morris had an interesting take on the discussion: he asked us what we were working on. His idea was: when you talk about the future, somebody in the room is already working on it.

Our final workshop was a team building exercise: we had to play a game based on the prisoner’s dilemma. And that was a nice metaphor for work: do you want to optimize your output at the expense of everyone else’s on the team or do you try to maximize your team’s output, or even your department’s output. There is no right or wrong answer, but this is something we all have in the back of our heads when we head to work in the morning.

When all of this was done, many of us chose to go to a restaurant in downtown Mountain View where we talked about our experiences at work, how frustrating or gratifying work can be… I think we were all delaying the time to say goodbye as this was such a great weekend. But after lunch we all parted our ways back home to get ready for our last two semesters.

This is the last stretch: it has been an awesome experience so far, and in less than 7 months we will be graduating. Like Dr. Griss said on our first kickoff day: this is a life-changing experience (even though I didn’t really believe it at the time). I had to give up some of my spare time to do it, but I think in the end the results will be more than worth it.

posted by Rom Lemarchand @ 4:02 PM  0 comments

Metrics and the challenges of new teams

So I’m rounding the corner toward the end of the semester, and I can’t believe we’ve almost completed another course already. This time I’m in the Metrics for Software Manager’s course and it requires us to familiarize ourselves with several concepts that were mostly unknown to us when we first started: a quick survey made by one of the professors on our first plenary session revealed almost none of us had dealt with metrics before. And she pointed out that after a few weeks many of us realized we know a lot more about metrics than we thought.

The format of the course is interesting: we are a team of consultants and we are brought in by a company to help them reach some goals. Usually, the project has some history and we are here to help mitigate risks, avoid the same pitfalls and reach the organization goals.

Of course, none of this is actually spelled out for us. We usually get a description of the problem like what we would get from the customers if we were to talk to them. So, before we even start measuring things we have to figure out what the organization goals are, how can metrics help them and finally make a metrics proposal.

This has been a very hectic course so far, and I have to say I’m looking forward to the end of the class and holiday break. The class structure is comparable to the other classes we’ve had so far, but my team has had a lot of challenges in getting up to speed.

First of all, this is the first time in all my classes that I’ve been on a team where none of us really knew each other: one of my teammates is also a second-year SEDM student like myself, but I’ve never had the opportunity to team with him before. My other two teammates are actually first-year students from the MS in Software Management program, so they are in their first semester at CMU and are still getting accustomed to quick teaming, class structures, etc. This has made the organization of the team take a lot longer than we would all have liked.

Its great to have a new mix of students to interact with – it opens up our network and exposes us to students who have other types of software experience. However, its hard to leave the comfort of the group you’re most familiar with – I’d spent a year already getting to know my fellow Software Engineering students, so now it takes effort on my part to get to know a new group of classmates. On my team, we’ve discovered several very strong personalities, so we’re experiencing a lot of talking and arguing together: this is good in the sense that we are challenged; but probably not the best way for us to be productive.

Finally (and I don’t know if its because of the holiday season or not), we are seem to be very busy this semester – so much so that we never have enough time to work during the week and we end up spending a lot of time working on weekends, and we’ve had to spend a lot of time cleaning up / making changes to the deliverables on top of that.

Thankfully, it seems like we have finally been able to overcome most of these challenges but our workflow is still far from optimal. What I really like about this situation is that this really is the first time I am on a team with issues and that puts a different perspective on the team-building books I had to read during my first year, it went from a concept I could only relate to vaguely to a process I have to live and learn through.

All in all, even though its been a challenging course, I’ve still loved the course content, and really enjoyed the meat of the class. Thankfully, as a team, we have made a lot of progress and we should end up being successful in this class.

posted by Rom Lemarchand @ 4:07 PM  0 comments

Foundations of Software Engineering – Presentation Time!

I’m now going to update you on what’s been going on since the last time I’ve talked to you. I’m currently in the fourth and final iteration of our project assignment in the Foundations of Software Engineering class. Our final presentation is this Thursday, December 6^th. So everyone in our team is working away trying to get all the implementation, testing, and presentation slides done and ready. I’m actually very excited for the final presentation. I’m eager to see how the other teams have implemented the project and how our program fares against them.

In the past few weeks we have started getting more into the coding aspect of the class. We have learned to use software like XPlanner to divide up each idea into story cards and tasks. This has helped a lot; and looking back, I wish we had learned to use it better. The way we started coding is by splitting up the code by the UI and the database layer. We would assign two people to each end. And we each jumped around to try to learn every aspect of the code better. I liked this way of doing things since I wasn’t very strong in either end and this gave me a great chance to learn both sides.

Since you caught me toward the end of this class, I’m in a reflective state of mind. What has been done and how could we have done it better and what did I learn? This class forces you to think about those questions at the end of every iteration so the next is smoother. Our team has had some bumps, mainly related to finding a common time for meetings, but overall it has been a relatively smooth process. We inherited code and had to learn that code base and make the call on when to rewrite some things and when to keep what we have. We added a few new features which we will highlight through a demo to our VP of Marketing and VP of Engineering (both roles played by faculty members). Overall I think we have gotten a thorough understanding of the software development cycle from requirements to release. And we’re almost done; this is the final stretch,

Wish me luck!

Happy Holidays,

Sirisha

posted by Sirisha @ 3:13 PM  0 comments

My Grad School Adventure Begins!

My name is Sirisha Pillalamarri. Before I start, here’s a little bit of info about me. I’m a 2006 graduate from Carnegie Mellon University (the main campus in Pittsburgh). I received my degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering with a double major in Computer Science. After graduation, I started working at a company called FactSet Research Systems, Inc. They are based in Norwalk, CT, and we make software for Wall Street. It’s a great company and a fun job; however, I had been thinking about graduate school for a while. I wanted to find a program that was more practical than a typical research-based masters for my career progression. I wanted my learning to apply back to my job at FactSet, and I wanted to learn both technical and management ideas. Another requirement for me was that I wanted to keep working in Connecticut while I attending school. I found that all of my requirements converged at Carnegie Mellon’s west coast campus, where I am now enrolled as a remote student in the MS Software Engineering, Development Management program.

So it’s been nearly three months since I’ve started this program and this blog will be a document of what I find on my way!

Let me talk about orientation for a little bit. Orientation is a four day event when you will meet and develop close bonds with all the other students you’ll be working with for the next two years. We have to fly out to California (one of the two required in-person gatherings) and they “orient” us to the program and the course of study. There are a lot of team-building exercises and we get prepped for our first class. The first year of this program is entirely technical, so both the Technical and Development Management tracks are mixed together for the entire year. We are also assigned teams during orientation and we spend a lot of time together. My experience was great! I ended up arriving in Cali a day late and I was very worried of the repercussions; however, the faculty and student services staff at Carnegie Mellon West were amazing! They were so nice and got me caught up and let me settle right in. I also went out during one of the nights to San Francisco with some fellow Software Engineering students (two of whom were my team members) and it was a very fun night and a great way to learn about each other!

After orientation, I jumped right into Foundations of Software Engineering. One of my main concerns was that I would be attending this entire program remotely. How was coding together going to work? Would our meetings be productive? Would I be able to get my ideas in? How would the infrastructure hold together? I was also, obviously, concerned about the time commitment I was taking on, working full-time and attending this grad program. I wasn’t sure how I would transition from working and having my nights free to working during the day and working during my evenings as well!

Well, I can say that the transition has gone fairly smoothly. Since I am in Eastern Time, I come home and take an hour to eat dinner or so and start working on graduate school work at 9:30 PM (6 PM PST) and work till 1 or 2 am. Hey, don’t let the late nights scare you – I may go to bed later now, but I also have shifted my entire schedule - I go to work one or two hours later now but I leave later work later too.

Since we are a remote team, we try to meet everyday for at least five to ten minutes to go over what has happened the day before. Since we spend several hours on the phone, we use Skype as our primary audio software and we use Live Meeting or Himachi to share desktops while we are coding or having a meeting. So far we have not had any major issues with being a virtual team. In fact, it’s more flexible. I don’t have to drive to a certain place to have my meeting or worry about the weather conditions, etc. So to my surprise, working virtually has been quite convenient.

The main challenge (and benefit) of this program and specifically this class, is that you work very tightly with your team. We are assigned to do pair programming, we are encouraged to meet everyday, and the code has so many interdependencies that it is very hard to split up into tasks. In my undergrad experience, I was used to working on my homework or my part and then integrating it with my classmates; it’s a different story at the grad level. So much of what we do is in teams and interactive, that I really have to plan well, so my time is as productive as possible. However, what’s nice is that outside of these meetings, I usually don’t have to do much more individual work for CMU, so that’s a positive. I’ll let you know if this gets any easier as our team learns each others’ strengths better.

The way Carnegie Mellon West is setup is to put you in a real-life simulated environment. It isn’t the traditional classroom setting where you are given strict instructions, deadlines and information that is easy to access. We learn to gather information, ideas, feedback, and suggestions through constant interaction with your peers, advisor and faculty members. So get ready for that.

Anyway, this is the start of Iteration 3 (the week of vacation is over…L). I’ll keep y’all posted on what I figure out, how I do it, and what the end result will be. Keep reading for more updates!

PS: Happy Halloween!

posted by Sirisha @ 3:20 PM  0 comments

Study groups, Reflections on the first half of the new semester

Wow, I can’t believe the Elements of Software Management course is (almost) over: only a presentation left and we will all be able to take a well deserved break.

This mini has been very different from the previous classes in that there were no team deliverables: they were all individual and only at the end did we have to make decisions together.

This is very different from what we (the DM students) were used to: our first year was almost exclusively focused on teams, group dynamics and getting to ramp up an effective team. Here, the study group acted more like a support rather than a work group: we relied on each other to talk about our individual work and share knowledge, insight or review each other’s work but we still were working on our own.

The program’s structure was as follows: once a week, we would have a session with a faculty member and other study groups where we would discuss our readings. Some time later in the week our study group would meet and discuss in the presence of a faculty member (our team advisor). Finally, we would hold one more study group meeting where we would discuss and review our deliverables.

This is not a lot of meetings, and quite honestly the change of pace was a little destabilizing: we had to spend a lot more time reading and working on our deliverables than managing a common project. This structure made it somewhat hard to get to know the other people in our study group, and I don’t think we ever passed the Forming stage of team development.

However, I still learned a lot during this course. My objective for the course was to become able to assess a software business’ strategy and financials and I found a new passion: I love reading financial statements and analyzing data. That was not the case of most people in my group (far from it), and it looks many people preferred the strategy assessment part.

Overall, I think I really enjoyed this course and it was a really nice change of pace going from a purely software-development oriented year with classes on requirements, architecture… to something a lot more general that encompasses not only the critical development phase of a project but also the soundness of a business and its practices.

For the last 7 weeks, I have been studying a software company and getting to know it as much as I can. The really fun part of this course is that we have to make a prognosis of where the business we study is going to be in 2 years and I would really love to see how far off from reality I am. Right now, I am pretty confident in my analysis and the soundness of my reasoning but we all know how things can change at the last minute.

I need to go prepare for my presentation tomorrow (wish me luck). Next time I will talk about my first impressions with the next course: Metrics for Software Managers.

posted by Carnegie Mellon West @ 3:33 PM  0 comments

Start of Year Two

Year Number Two has started, and it’s time for me to start the management-specific portion of the program.

We are now separated from the technical track students (if you want to know what they are up to, I suggest reading Minh’s blog), and doing joint work with the software management program students.

During the Elements of Software Management course, we are not working on teams anymore but rather in what we call study groups: our deliverables are individual but we discuss readings and assignments. Also, my group decided to review each other’s assignments in an effort to improve communication and (hopefully) quality.

The basic idea of this course is that we are assigned a particular software company to analyze from different aspects: strategy, finances, etc. It can be pretty interesting at times and pretty boring at others (I’m not a huge fan of financial statements, although some of my other classmates are really into it). However, I think it puts a lot more emphasis on the business aspect of software: this is why I switched from the Technical to Development Management track.

The change of pace is kind of hard to get accustomed to after having fallen into a routine for the past 3 semesters, but overall I think it will make me appreciate better the challenges faced by higher-level managers and executives. So far, I have learned a lot of things with which I was not at all familiar – from finding a company’s strategy to reading a balance sheet.

But more than that, the idea is that we are simultaneously learning all this and doing it at the same time. This is something one of the people in my focus group mentioned: if I only had to do the readings, I would forget that stuff pretty quickly. However, since I am analyzing a company at the same time it actually gives me the opportunity to see how this applies to the real world.

I also think learning this has made me a more well-rounded individual and while I currently don’t need all I’m learning in my job it certainly opens up more opportunities and it has allowed me to have interesting conversations with project managers and directors at work, and I think that’s what this is all about: even though I am far from being an executive I am now able to understand their jobs and the kind of decisions they have to make every day.

That’s it for today. Next time I’ll try to talk a little more on the dynamics of study groups and how this affects the way we work.

posted by Carnegie Mellon West @ 2:00 PM  0 comments

• Getting Pushed Out of My Comfort Zone
• The Gathering
• Metrics and the challenges of new teams
• Foundations of Software Engineering – Presentation...
• My Grad School Adventure Begins!
• Study groups, Reflections on the first half of the...
• Start of Year Two
• Year 1 Retrospection: What I Learned, What I Need ...
• Aaak! I’m the Team Leader!
• Architecture and cross-team communication

• May 2007
• June 2007
• July 2007
• August 2007
• October 2007
• December 2007
• January 2008