Carnegie Mellon Offers New Master's Degree in Product Management
Hi All,<p>I&#x27;m the academic head of this new program on the School of Computer Science side of things. Happy to answer any questions you might have about this program (though it will have to be in the morning since it&#x27;s about 1am on the east coast and well past my bedtime)   And no, I didn&#x27;t plant this link.   :)<p>One of the key strengths of our Master&#x27;s of Product Management program is that it combines elements of computer science, user experience design, and business skills (including strategy and management). We also have a significant component devoted to communication and leadership skills, based on interactive workshops and personal mentoring.<p>On a personal note, this notion of marrying business skills with UX design and computer science has been a long-term goal of mine. I&#x27;m a techie at heart (I got my PhD from Berkeley CS), but I feel that having strong skills in user experience or CS only helps so much if you don&#x27;t have decision-making authority. And to get to those decision-making positions, you need to be able to manage technical teams well, understand how a product fits within the existing market, and know about best practices in prototyping and evaluating user interfaces so that your product has a compelling user experience.