Design of a Graduate level Software Engineering Program with a Product Perspective and a Product Management Specialization

Abstract

While Software Engineering practice in the industry had matured well over the second half of the twentieth century, the first two decades of this millennium have witnessed disruptive growth of the field arising out of the evolution of new problem domains (e.g., intelligent applications and data management) as well as diverse deployment patterns (e.g., cloud, mobile and embedded devices). More subtle and impactful for practitioners is the change in perspective and approach-from a project-driven lifecycle to a product-driven lifecycle of software. Academic programs have kept up with the former set of changes as evidenced in curricular aspects or components such as DevOps, Mobile Application Development, Cloud-Native Application Development, Data Engineering, Big Data Systems, Software Engineering for AI, etc. But there is a distinct lack of representation of the product perspective or approach and the emerging role of Product Management in typical University-level Software Engineering programs and curricula. We propose to address this gap by identifying-and then incorporating into a curriculum-the following:(i)requirements and features of a Software Product Life Cycle,(ii)practices of a product-driven approach to Software Engineering, and(iii)competencies of a Software Product Manager.We show how these aspects can be addressed by a graduate level Software Engineering program with an optional specialization in Software Product Management targeted at practicing Software Engineers. We present the design of such a program in sufficient detail along with validation from industry and comparison with other programs.