How can an ordinary manager along with a hardcore techie pump up to an IT manager?

Hello, "Megamind"!



I would like to devote this publication to one IT master’s program, which I am a student and which, from my point of view, is the only one on the market that is not purely technical and allows children with different backgrounds to have a great interest in IT. efforts to self-education, to gain knowledge and skills to develop in this environment.
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Having received a bachelor's degree in, well, very general, the direction of "Management", I felt that this is definitely not enough. I understood the need to focus on one specific area and narrow down the subject of study, and having a great (and main) interest in the field of information technology and a desire to work in this environment (not a techie), I was faced with a significant problem - almost all of the announced programs in the educational market, related to the IT field, aimed at either hellish techies or comrades with work experience from 2–3 years and having unrealistic management experience (MBA programs).

Once I met a completely new, experimental Master's program "Information Technology Manager" of the Moscow State University Graduate School of Business and decided to take a chance.

What is the program about?

So, what do we study and what is IT management? We all live in the age of information, non-standard business solutions and innovative approaches, where, as before, “people decide everything”. Provided that these frames are properly prepared. Is IT management computer management? No, the computer is controlled by the program. Is this program management? A programmer is writing a programmer. So is “IT management” the management of programmers? Not only. There are plenty of other things. IT management is a very broad area of ​​knowledge in which, besides IT issues directly, the manager is faced with personnel management, financial management, production management, sales, PR, and many, many others.
In other words - IT manager is a kind of link between technical and business professionals, carrying out effective and productive interaction between them.

Academic disciplines

In general, the curriculum consists of two parts and part of the subjects is taught in English:
General disciplines:

1. Management Economics
2. Metazadachi management
3. Management history and methodology
4. Strategic management
5. Corporate Finance
6. Organizational behavior
7. Strategic marketing
8. Change management
9. Research Methods in Management
10. Personnel Management
11. Management Consulting

Specific disciplines:

1. Legal aspects and anti-corruption measures in IT management
2. Use of information for management decisions
3. Standards for the provision of IT services (ITIL)
4. Enterprise Architecture
5. Basics of software development and integration
6. Basics of infrastructure optimization
7. Modern methods of presenting information
8. IT Security Management
9. Managing the development and implementation of IT strategy
10. Financial accounting and IT performance evaluation
11. Knowledge management
12. Project management in the field of software development and implementation
13. IT project management
14. IT management in banks and financial organizations
15. Practical experience of IT management in large projects
16. IT management in service organizations
17. Innovation and IT research
18. IT audit
19. IT Business Process Management (BPM)

Positive aspects of the program

What attracted me to her and what moments are justified in the end?

• First, the MSU Graduate School of Business is the official partner of SODIT (Union of IT-Directors of Russia) , and the president of this Union is the curator of the IT Management program, which gives it a huge advantage: this is the connection with the business representatives gives the faculty an understanding of the requirements market, on how best to create a program and a learning process. Moreover, the content of its program, so far, the only one in Russia, fully complies with the requirements of the new professional standard "Information Technology Manager" (approved by order of the Ministry of Labor of Russia N 716n of October 13, 2014)
• Secondly - a combination of technical and managerial disciplines. For me, as a manager, by education, the most interesting are specific subjects such as: enterprise architecture, BPM, basics of programming and system administration, IT standards, etc., which are extensively and intensively taught in HSB. For my colleagues - techies - the opposite value has the main value: financial management, strategic management, organizational behavior, leadership skills, and others, which have the manager's skill pumped through.
• Thirdly - the possibility of passing international internships and practices in the field of information management. In the summer, a trip to South Korea (Seoul) is planned, and during the academic semester, students who wish to undergo the internship are given the opportunity to intern in one of the partner companies.

Disadvantages of the program

During the first semester, I managed to improve the business processes optimization, programming and understanding of the IT environment, but after studying one semester, the main drawback of the program for me, so far has become one, but an important fact - its experimentation and novelty:

• Yes, on the one hand, it can be a plus - the novelty causes flexibility of the program, gives the student the opportunity to be heard and influence the learning process, but on the other, there is instability: the main team of practitioners from the IT business environment is just being formed, which brings not only positive results, but also small disappointments.
• Also, experiment in such educational endeavors often implies a small number of students in the stream. Our 18 people represent a certain imbalance of backgrounds (there are fewer techies than people with economics and humanities education), which limits the ability to transfer heterogeneous experience and jointly achieve synergies in learning. It is clear that this problem will be solved as early as next year - because of the growing interest in the program, the school plans to expand the flow to 35-40 people, but it is a pity that this experiment affected us in particular.

As a result

I will not get ahead of myself and praise the program - life will show how much it will contribute to my professional development. However, the fact that thanks to her I feel a real growth of the skill of managerial and specific skills is a fact.

The official website of Moscow State University. Lomonosov
The official website of the faculty of the Graduate School of Business
Official site of the master program: "Information Management"
The official group of VSHB Vkontakte