Mixing MBA and engineering: more firms demanding IT business know-how - Masters of Business Administration, information technology - Field Report

Software Magazine, Feb, 1991 by Elizabeth U. Harding

AE0030

A demand for business know-how has created a new dimension in computer science education. As some experts say: pure math and applied math-you need both of them.

"It is my impression that the scientific engineering environment is beginning to have three dimensions," said Ed Yourdon, president of American Programmer, Inc., New York, and developer of the Yourdon methodology for software engineering.

The first dimension is pure computer science, dealing with theory, how to build compilers, etc." Yourdon said. "The second is software engineering, which teaches students such disciplines as Case technology And the thud is a newly emerging type of curricula-a spin-off-into the business side of information technology management."

Traditionally, information technology (IT) management has been tied to the technology side of an organization, although most observers now agree that it has become a strategic part of any business. Needless to say, this phenomenon has contributed to the traditional differences between "techies" and corporate management. There are many reasons why system planning has remained separate from the business side of an organization.

Strategic system planning has not become a boardroom issue. It hasn't become a corporate priority yet," said David Sharon, president of Case Associates Inc., Oregon City, Ore., during the recent IEEE Case conference in Lrvine, Calif. Once business plays a greater role in the managing of information and starts driving the hiring process for programmers, it will face a challenge of adding business expertise to the technical side of the company, Sharon predicted.

"We are spending most of our time on understanding computer architectures and programming languages," said Sharon. "Though this area dominates most of education, it's becoming the least important because new tools are making you immune from the operating system.

Graphic user terfaces make things a lot easier," he said. Education now needs to emphasize the business and process side. We are just beginning to recognize software as a separate discipline of engineering. We are just beginning to implement Case tools." According to Sharon, it is important to understand information science as it pertains to three principal areas:

* the business and business problems germane to a specific industry,

* the proem of building a proper information system solution that solves business problems;

* and the implementation-how to make a solution work on a particular computer architecture utilizing a specific programming language.

EUROPEANS TACKLING ISSUE

European schools and universities may be slightly ahead of the U.S. in addressing need for a new business dimension to information science. For instance, a London business school began offerring graduate courses toward a new master's degree in business administration (MBA) in IT management during 1989.

We were the first to offer such a program,' said Anne Leeming, director of the MBA in IT management program at the City University Business School in London.

We felt that IT people needed business skills so that they could manage themselves more effectively and contribute to the growth of their companies," Leeming said. On the other side of it is today's young manager who says, I can't be a good manager without a decent knowledge of IT and information systems development." The full-time MBA in IT management course lasts 12 months and, according to Leeming, concentrates on the following issues:

* how to manage the introduction, development and maintenance of information systems in any area of an organization, through the proper selection of such systems and their specification in information terms;

* how to manage IT professionals, and how to assess the quality of proposed hardware and software and the labor requirements for running them; and n how to manage the specification, design, implementation and enhancement of all types of information systems, while recognizing their probable impact on an organization.

The professional title of such a graduate, according to the British Computer Society (BCS), will be hybrid manager." The term describes the new breed of managers as persons with technical and business skills.

A BCS task group has determined that about 10,000 hybrid managers are needed by U.K companies and those positions should be filled by 1995.

The two sides-business and technology-are coming closer all the time,' said Wilhelm Rossak, a professor who teaches at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark.

In Austria all computer science students have to take business classes, and today's business students grow up with the knowledge of computers,' he said. Other observers note, however, that universities must aim their research at solving problem now facing business. For example, a student can spend years studying artificial intelligence techniques and then find that few businesses need his or her expertise. There are many more unanswered questions regarding the expected Am levels of DP personnel in the coming years. For example, observers ask: What kind of skills will be expected of a typical programmer? Will a master's degree in business help a systems expert make it to the top of a corporation? Or will someone with a business background and a science degree do better?