why MISMers should focus on Google APM?

Consulting is a hot favorite for the MISMers (MISM students) as they want to utilize and deploy their newly gained knowledge about business-enabling via technology and running technology as a business immediately.

However, Google APM is a profile that helps you achieve that as well. Check out this set of 18 globe-trotting Google APMs. Of course, this is also a publicity stunt run by Google recruitment to attract the best talent at cheaper rates (yea, Google's cheap in their payscale - but what the heck, they give awesome stock-grants - about 200 shares per APM and on top of that, such perks). Check out this take on Google's APM program.

Unlike the consulting firms, Google maintains the entrepreneurial spirit of these young bright minds by providing them opportunity to spin their own projects, enabling them to be successful, and finally, bringing those to the market for the greater good of humanity. Much credit goes to initial founders and global product development chief such as Marissa Myers. Ms. Myers is young, energetic, and understands that the new generation folks would get put off if they are restrained from doing certain other things at work. How to channelize this huge burst of energy for the company's benefit is something that the Google leadership has mastered. Of course, it may appear that everyone's running amuck with any idea - however, that's not true. There is method to the madness and I wont divulge more details given to me by an ex-Product Manager during my interview for Product Management position earlier this year.

I would strongly recommend Google Product Management for those MISM students who yearn for the blaze of glory via entrepreneurial pursuits. I was oblivious about this opportunity till half-way into my program. When I discovered about it, I was obsessed with it. Google didnt' move fast and after 5 months of waiting I had to sign up my papers with my current employer, as Google was dragging the recruitment decision.

Google has been sharp enough to identify MISM as a program to source their PMs and APMs. Last year, they started having CMU on their radar for the same. Earlier, they saw CMU as a location for Devs, etc. However, the perception has changed and they intend to hire APMs and PMs as well. I hope this relation builds over a period of time and gets formalized making Google as a formal recruiter for the MISM program, similar to the consulting firms such as Deloitte, Diamond, McKinsey, etc.

does ITIL v3 marginalize value of CMU's MISM program?

As I read ITIL v3 since summer this year, I realised that most of the techniques mentioned in the books (primarily Service Strategy and in general, all the five books) are taught in MISM and more. Also, based on one's interests, one can shape program to become an operations expert for IT operations or services' operations. I had a doubt whether this was all the information/knowledge I paid for at MISM? Does the release of ITIL v3 appreciate value for one of the alums at the cost of rest of the current students?

Well, ITIL v3 does not marginalize MISM program. In fact, it enhances the value of the program - by highlighting that one of the alumni (Majid Iqbal) from the program was one of the authors for the ITIL v3 set of best practices. This highlights that CMU MISM program's students are thought leaders.

The pure inter-disciplinary approach that the school promotes and adopts creates a rich culture which leads to innovations. As Bill Gates mentioned on the Charlie Rose show, the world is far more inter-dependent today and we have multi-lateral alliances everywhere. In such a world, it is essential to create these linkages between various disciplines.

In future, plenty of new problems will emerge with newer dimensions. Whoever solves them will have certain set of best practices - those can get recorded into ITIL v4, v5, v6, etc. What CMU teaches you is how to approach a problem from different dimensions and solving problems with effective and enduring solutions.

I don't intend to spark a huge debate here by assuming superiority. There are a lot of aspects that can be changed in the program dynamics. However, it is clearly a program that's unmatched. If you want people who bring business solution by leveraging technology then currently, MISM is the place to hunt such people from.

deck creation and consulting

CMU MISM instilled certain slides' deck-creation qualities in me which cannot be emphasized any more. My success at deck-creation and logical structuring have helped me quite a bit at my consulting job. Creating decks instantly with MECE, Mynto's pyramid principle, etc comes naturally to me - thanks to CMU MISM. These were directly or indirectly learnt in the CMU environment.

Also, the creation of POVs were inspired from the Telecom Management class of Dr. Sakir Yucel and the Managing Services Organizations by Majid Iqbal. This training has helped me develop some provocative POVs at the firm.

Ramayya Krishnan, the chief architect of the program, has well said in this video - how IT/IS interact with policies, how they interact with the business processes, etc is very important to leverage IT's capabilities. Business technology and IT Management are forte for CMU MISM students. Andy Wasser summarizes well in this video by saying "... the students who want to see a business opportunity and intelligently know how to apply technology !" CMU MISM is a business technology program.

Currently, only progressive consulting firms have realised this aspect. Sooner or later, the rest of the IT world will realize that and source their talent from this program.

network nyc

Network NYC is at 3 West Club this year - will look forward to meeting other CMU folks there. Thereafter, the event's organized to go to Connolly's for an after party. I plan to swing folks to Tonic (nearby) after that. However, let us see what will be the mood be like. We may end up going some other hipper place - Tonic's kindda lame for me.

However, I must have energy left. Too many assignments.
I have an early morning-long meeting till noon in midtown with an investment bank and a hospitality major. Later, I have to continue to work on the point-of-views that I've been working on. It's provocative and will be out soon on the firm's site. In the evening, there is a media sector special event on Branded Entertainment at the HBO office at Times Square. The prime part is that I have to present it later to the organization at the Quarterly event. Though I am an FSI major, I am a TMT minor. I guess that explains my choice for NYC - lol !

My cousin's coming - so, he will be my responsibility from tomorrow evening till Sunday morning. It will be great to meet him after almost 2.5 years.

I look forward to the coming days!

value added by ivys!

Donald Asher has come out with yet another interesting writeup for schooling !
Check this out: http://teacherweb.com/CA/PacificaHighSchoolOxnard/MrsGillett/Is-the-Ivy-League-Worth-It_.pdf

Does Ivy League matter (beyond finance)?

Also, another advice of having least debt when one gets out is very important. Developing social skills and technically skills is an equally important advice. Thus, getting into an environment where there is a good balance between to the two makes more sense.

This is what I was thinking when I used to see the undergrad students at CMU. CMU is too expensive when it comes to learning undergrad education. Then, why invest so much when a person from some other school is also going to join the same job? Also, these days recruiters and companies have smartened up. With good training programs, they would hire folks from lesser known univs and then train them in order to drive down the prices of the labor from these highly known univs.

So, candidates who are applying need to think if they are getting a good value-added when they join CMU or are similar returns possible elsewhere (say Kelly, or the likes). Returns will vary from person to person based on which skill is valued how much by the individual who is evaluating it! For instance, developing social skills may be valued highly by someone lacking it but may be valued less by someone already possessing it.

Graduate !

The last week at CMU was fairly eventful. Here's the account for pre-graduation, graduation, and post-graduation.

Pre-graduation:
The semester got over and I was partying non-stop ! Two parties in one evening on Thursday - first, at Prof Steve Roehrig's place and then later at Firehouse with Turkish Students Association (TASA-Pgh). The initial one was sober and a good opportunity to meet the faculty members in a social setting. TASA party was fairly nice as I met a new dance partner Ashley ! Next Friday, we went to Matrix for another night out with her friends.

Graduation: This was a memorable event for me - not because I was graduate but for reasons as follows:

First, the graduation dinner was a cool plan by Val - this one was at Le Mont ! As CMU represents, it was a fairly international dinner - ppl from origins of US, Iran, China, Bosnia, and India !

After the dinner, myself and Gorana went to Firehouse as she wanted to check out the place.

Second, Val's mom was present for cheering me up at the diploma handing over ceremony for MISMs. My parents didn't make it to the US but I had someone from my American family to cheer me up !

Third, Bal & Val gave me the exact gift that I wanted :) Val's mom gave me a graduation gift too. Her actual gift was being there for cheering me!

Graduation day was a day to cheer an effort and the sacrifices that went into getting the degree. Clearly, I was not ready to leave school once I was there until April. In April, something happened and I was so ready to graduate - I feel the emptiness without the school even now !

When I came to CMU, I had a situation similar to the one Odysseus had in Homer's Odyssey. On one hand, he had the beautiful Calypso and on the other, he had his kingdom Ithaca. Odysseus went for Ithaca and I went for Carnegie Mellon U. I wish that alike him, I will be able to get what I want.

Post graduation:

After graduation, I left my townhouse in Sq. Hill. Believe me, I was happy to leave it - lol !

I went to meet Bal and Val for this one last dinner at IL Pizzaiolo (Bal said that I must have Pizza out there before I leave Pgh). They used wood heated ovens to churn out some delicious and sizzling pizzas. The cheese was unmatchable. They beat the Giordano's (Chicago fame) hands down. However, I got some information due to which my stay in Pgh got extended. In a way, it was a fortunate accident as I got to have some family time. :)

Next day, Val bhabhi made some tasty Chinese dinner and we watched another movie. Yea, she fed me just like my Bhabhi would ! Later that evening, we watched Da Vinci Code (yea, this was a movie on my pending-list). Finally, on Saturday evening ,we went to horse racing at Meadow Lands. That was a fun evening and then we watched Notes on a Scandal.

Last day in Pgh morning, I checked out Pandolfo's with Bal and Val. It was a sumptuous meal. While leaving, I was sobby and almost cried while I sat in the car. I have decided that if I am unable to settle down in NYC, I shall go back to Pgh !

what area of strategy to specialize in ?

Another common question by prospective management students:
What area of strategy to specialize in?

Answer:
What area depends on what you want to do and your skillsets.

Option 1:
If you have good project management skills then you might want to do implementation of strategy. This is important because it is often found that the implementation of a strategy fails to match with the original vision and goal of the project (I consider an entire business as one large project here)

Option 2:
If you do not have good project management skills but have good analytical skills w.r.t. market research, economics (both macro and micro), design skills, etc then you might consider designing the strategy as your option.

For best results, a firm is well-off giving the design work to someone who has these skills as well as possesses the experience mentioned in the earlier option. Experience is important in order to make the design "pragmatic". Often, the companies cannot procure such folks and do a trade-off on either experience or design skills due to shortage of time.

Bottomline: Get a better grip of fundamental concepts for the field before thinking of strategy area. It is a buffet dinner out there - you yourself need to figure out what suits your palate, appetite, and digestive system.

graduation

This is a follow-up post to an earlier post here. Comtemplating on my journey of MISM - naaaah, there's plenty of time for that later.

Graduation's in the air and there are celebrations all around. One full week of parties and catching up with friends, et al.

Last Sat night, we went clubbing to Firehouse to celebrate this one last party with colleagues before everyone disperses for their internships and full time positions.

Yday evening, there was a welcome event at Six Penn Kitchen for the newcomers (the event became slightly unpleasant because there was barely any food after 5.30pm and party was scheduled from 5pm to 7pm- I must say that the organizers did a dismal show in the party estimation! The choice of place was good though.

Tonight, some of the existing students have a dinner at Anisha's place - her parents have come down to visit her and her brother for 3 weeks. She's invited everyone for a dinner made by her mom :)

Tomorrow night, there's another party at Prof Steve Roehrig's house !

Friday night, I plan to go clubbing - but Pgh night life is not as active on Fri nights - unless there are $1 drinks - lol ! Letsee - I missed Diesel lounge last Friday night when Anisha visited it - I might go there this Fri night.

Thereafter, on Saturday evening, a graduation dinner with my Indo-American family (Bal, Val, Val's mom and some other guests) at LeMont ! This is right after MISM/MSIT ceremonies in the evening.

Catching up with friends over coffee, lunches, dinners is the routine for this week prior to the graduation. I have to make a list of who all are left to be met.

I've to get my gown and cap in the meanwhile. Also, packing for the move from Pgh to NYC is going on. That's the only painful part these days.

where do MISMs go?

Prospectives frequently ask this question to me in order to judge RoI of MISM program: "Where do MISMs go (after they graduate)?"

I decided to blog on this as it is really easy for them to check.

Professional social networking group such as linkedin are open and can be easily checked out by searching on keyword "MISM". They are everywhere - consulting firms such as Deloitte, McKinsey, Booz Allen Hamilton, etc....product firms such as Google, Microsoft, Oracle, etc financial services firms such as Goldman Sachs, Barclays, UBS,etc , and on linked in there are atleast 156 users (while I am posting this ..) who are returned as a search result to MISM.

After knowing this and the avg base from career services page on MISM website, they can judge alum's sals from salary.com or something. Stop harassing existing students or alums about what salaries folks in their batches got - it is not only impolite (politically) but also indicates immaturity of the candidate to discuss salaries with an alum. Salaries vary widely. As a thumb rule, ppl with experience tend to get higher salaries than those without. However, along with experience, relevance is often important. If your earlier experience is not relevant to the job offer you are getting there is a high probability of having lesser salary. Besides, the progressions will be smoother.

I like to give an analogy of a buffet dinner to those who ask me such questions. It's a dinner table out there - you must pick or get prepared to pick what suits you. For instance, some ppl may not like consulting and hence, there's no point for them to go towards that. Some other set may like coding and they should go for that. Its a soul-searching process which one must undergo and not just get a job for a "paycheck".

There are ppl in the current and previous batches who have turned down higher paying offers (and I am talking large differences - to the order of US$35k) in order to choose the work which they want to do. This is a sign of maturity!

I often say that you dont have to be a MISM to get a huge sal - that you can get by doing coding on Wall St (lol !) . The reasons for joining the program must be right or else at the end you will be left unsatisfied.

Define what you want to do and search in that direction. The result may even indicate that MISM is not what you want. In that case, do not invest in it just for the sake of doing a Masters.

Frankly speaking, CMU's inter-disciplinary approach is awesome and based on one's readiness to slog, one can achieve their objectives if worked well. Of course, CMU is Computer U. and hence, one has to keep in mind that one should not crib about not making it for some trading position after MISM (though there are ppl in the past who have made it). For achieving that, there are different programs (may be different schools) which one must consider.

Bottomline: Do your research well, before asking questions to an alum or an existing student. Then, ask crisp, concise, and precise questions while presenting context as well.

bomb scare at hamburg hall, CMU

Here's the article from Post Gazette. Hamburg Hall, a historic landmark (1900), is the place where my program(MISM) has its lounge.

I will not comment anything as this was a routine alarm for a suspicious liquid and cannot be correlated to heightened security post VTech's unfortunate incident - CMU security was always fairly vigil.

What Board Needs to know about IT !

Board IT Engagement Maturity Model.
Yes, Yet another Maturity Model ! This one deals with how boards of directors are approaching information technology and how they must approach.

Ken Porrello, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, introduced this concept at CMU today for a set of ISM grad students. He has close to 20 years of experience in various industries and currently, oversees some of the India operations as well. He is one of the senior partners at the TI practice, where I would be joining in June this year.

Phase 1 of his research included Boards of 455 companies in the United States. Phase 2 is going to include a broad participation in form of 1000 global companies. The phase 1 outcomes can be seen here. The magazine Corporate Board Member also mentioned about this research initiative at Deloitte in their magazine.

At the end, he applauded CMU for having such an interdisciplinary program such as the MISM program.

challenging times ahead...

Next week is going to be hectic ! Mid-terms, assignments, taxes, what not !
Time management will be critical and keeping good health would be essential.

I might sound masochistic while inflicting this pain on myself by taking up so many courses though only 3 units worth work was required for graduation. But hey, I wanted to see if I can do it- this one last time :) I started off school with 7 courses and ending with similar workload.

Letsee how it goes !

which company is your favorite company?

Usually, many of my colleagues ask me this question: Which is your dream company?
My reply: my own company :D

They ask: Besides that?
My reply: From what perspective?

They ask: to work for...duh!
My reply: None

spring courses

Technically, the school authorities call it the spring semester - I have no idea why - this cold is getting annoying - the temperature is 8F and feels like -2F. Man, that's -18C....! that's coooooooooollllllllddddddddddddd !

I wanted to write this post since a long time but either didn't have time or didn't have an inclination towards it. However, right now, I think I am over my writer's block period and can write ...and yo, I am back !

Macroeconomics

Prof Christopher Sleet has recommended the textbook of the most influential economist in the world - Mr. Ben Bernanke !I have the fifth edition but the professor insists on the sixth one which came out midway between the mini. However, this is a semester long course.

I am grasping some important macroeconomic concepts which help give an added dimension and credibility to any of my analysis.

Some of the CMU students are so impudent - they keep their feet on the bag! Check out the adjacent picture !

Business Law and Ethics

Course on Contracts by Ashish Arora was cancelled. That made me take this course and I am so glad I took it. Prof Dale Hershey has close to 40 years of experience practicing civil lawsuits. The book by Beatty Samuelson on Business Law is exhaustive and interesting at the same time.

This gives me a perspective on strategy analysis and also good amount of information required for a manager while making decisions and taking actions.

Contracts, Corporate structuring, intellectual property, cyber law, class actions, jurisdictions, shareholder rights, insider trading, antitrust, environmental law, consumer law, uniform commercial code (UCC), CISG, etc are the topics which are broadly well-covered in this mini-course.

On a sidebar, I met a bunch of first years (MBA) students in this class for our group presentation - all of them were caught up in a crazy chase for the internships .... 2 of the 4 I worked with got offers from Amazon which are freaking amazing offers :) One got from AT Kearney and one is still looking as she wants more !

Digital Transformation

Prof Ramayya Krishnan brings in some good models to think while making decisions w.r.t. IT and deployment of IT for strategic purposes. We mostly deal with IT user category of companies and not the creators.

However, I have a complaint: As participation has such a high grade component, in order to be fair to everyone, he gives way too much time to some of the folks in the class who crave attention. For instance, someone gives a long pregnant pause (just to get the footage) once s/he is given an opportunity to talk. Moreover, there are folks who bring in previous points while the discussion is in a specific flow (no matter how irrelevant they are to the current discussion). Then there's someone that takes at least 3 mins to describe the point s/he is trying to make.

I feel stuck in this class.... I didn't have a choice while taking this course as it has been made a capstone course which is compulsory. It must be dropped from the list of required courses - or must be allowed to be exempted if something similar is done. My strong opinions come from the fact that I had to miss the Capability Improvement for Service Organizations class due to time conflict with Digital Transformation. If DT wasn't a core course, I would've taken the Capability one !


Information Security and Risk Analysis

Interesting course with a great deal of insight in valuing risk. This is close to Options Pricing which I studied last semester. When I put up the point regarding security firms coming up with insurance for the clients w.r.t. managed security services, professor mentioned that there is lack of data. I could quickly correlate it to the fact that in case of stocks, there is second to second ticker data.

Prof Ashish Arora puts out the ideas really neat - these are useful for a consultant in general and a security department personnel in specific.

One of his TA Sasha Ramanov has a nice site which you can check out here. Another TA suggested me the WEIS 2007 event. I will try to make sure I am in Pgh around that time in order to attend it.

Lectures are conducted in Collaborative Innovation Center (CyLab hosts Google, Intel, etc offices here) for the infrastructure setup as the classes are being relayed to Kobe(Japan) as well.

Capstone project: Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking
I can't write much about this as we have to protect the interests of our client.

In order to maximize the learning experience, our advisor Dave Burke has given roles to the folks who did not have experience in those areas. For instance, I have acquired knowledge on being an architect but never worked as an architect before - so, I was made the architect. Someone else hasn't done project management, so s/he took up prj mgr role and myself and someone else who has done it will guide him/her. This method has its own pros and cons.

All in all, a busy semester going on. I can manage to hit the gym several times a week and I am happy about that. Moreover, I am able to undertake other activities such as ice-skating, skiing, clubbing, latino dancing, etc in some free pockets of time.