Development of a graduate software project management degree

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.