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The Carnegie Mellon West part-time software engineering master’s program prepares experienced software engineers for technical leadership roles in software development organizations.
 Technical Track: As a graduate of this program track, you will be able to analyze, architect, design, plan, and develop complex software systems, applying state-of-the-practice agile and plan-driven approaches in software engineering.
Within the track, you will learn how to align software engineering decisions with your company’s business goals and to develop the communication, teamwork, and negotiation skills needed to be an effective technical leader.
Curriculum
Working in a team to plan and produce releases of complex software applications, you act as an employee of a fictional company. Faculty members provide guidance and coaching as you apply methods and concepts from assigned readings and develop task-specific work products. Team members collaborate in planning, decision-making, and execution. Most courses include seminar discussions, simulated work scenarios, and a formal presentation of a team proposal to faculty members in addition to delivering work products for each task within the course. Each course offers an appropriate balance of individual and team work.
New Student Orientation
The MS in Software Engineering program starts with a required four-day orientation one week prior to the start of the program. This exciting event gives you the opportunity to get to know your classmates and faculty members, prepares you for the rigors of your first course, and creates an environment in which you begin the process of building strong team dynamics.
First Year Courses
Foundations of Software Engineering (14 weeks)
You learn and apply foundational concepts in teamwork, requirements management, and design techniques using an agile method to develop the next release of an existing software application, building on a legacy code base.
Requirements Engineering (14 weeks)
Your team interacts with stakeholders to elicit and formalize requirements for a new software product. You employ systematic modeling and analysis methods as well as flexible, user-oriented prototyping techniques to clarify both the functional and non-functional requirements.
Architecture (14 weeks)
You investigate several distinct architectural styles used in software products and evaluate the suitability of these styles for your own product. You make high-level design decisions about your product’s components and their interactions and evaluate how well your decisions meet functional and non-functional requirements.
 Second-Year Courses Metrics for Software Engineers (7 weeks)
As a member of a team, you analyze and propose metrics initiatives for fictional software organizations with specific software engineering issues, aligning the initiatives with business and stakeholder goals. Your team uses this analysis to understand how the software engineering approach an organization uses might influence the choice of software metrics and the adoption plan.
Avoiding Software Project Failures (7 weeks)
You examine several case studies of failed software projects to understand costly mistakes and their root causes. Based on this information, you plan your next project to achieve success.
Construction (14 weeks)
Your team studies the software lifecycle in greater detail by gathering requirements, creating a detailed design, constructing the implementation, and executing the test plan. You iteratively develop and test product components, assemble and test the final software product, and demonstrate the software product to the faculty.
The Gathering
After the second and fourth semesters, all students return to campus for a weekend of co-curricular learning opportunities, skill enhancement, team-building exercises, and fun. The program focuses on activities that continue to build a strong sense of community as well as team and individual growth exercises.
Electives*
Electives vary from year to year and typically include both technically-oriented and business-oriented options, as well as the chance to work on a practicum project.
Management of Outsourced Development (14 weeks)
Your project team analyzes the business rationale, risks, and benefits for outsourcing some or all of a new software project and presents its recommendations for outsourcing to senior managers. Your analysis includes which tasks should be outsourced, how to select suppliers, and how to manage the outsourced work effectively.
| Recent Practicums |
- SAP - RFID for asset tracking
- Wind River - Vital signs monitor for embedded systems
- CommerceNet - MicroFormats
- Noveau Systems - Scripting for a P2P workflow
- Panasonic Research - Peer-to-Peer distributed agent standard
- CMU Robotic Institute - Robotic diaries
- Nokia – “Your office anywhere, everywhere”
- TopCoder – Mobile RSS Reader
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Practicum (14 weeks)
You work in a small team to apply what you have learned to a real-world business problem. Diverse organization and business clients sponsor the software projects and work actively with the team to ensure successful completion. Your team negotiates the plans, schedules, and deliverables with high standards for software management approaches, accountability, and teamwork.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship (14 weeks)
You will work in small teams, advised by experienced venture capitalists and facilitated by other industry experts, to master the elements of entrepreneurship in the context of a business plan competition. Your team evaluates cases, meets with business leaders, and refines a business plan. The winning team receives a significant cash prize, and selected plans may be submitted to external business plan competitions.
Software Product Marketing (7 weeks)
Your team develops a marketing plan for a new software product or service, identifying programs needed to support the cost-effective launch and ongoing marketing activities for the software. Teams define the product positioning and the product marketing initiatives, including pricing, channel management, service agreements, product collateral, sales, marketing communications, and partnerships.
Enterprise Architecture (7 weeks)
As part of an architecture team, you propose and evaluate architectural alternatives for software systems, including both packaged and SaaS applications. Your study includes integration mechanisms, inclusion of pre-built components, and adherence to standards to satisfy a given set of business, technical, and functional requirements.
Human-Computer Interaction (7 weeks)
Your team develops and evaluates an interaction design for a software product, learning to use a range of tools and techniques. You model users using personas and scenarios, create an interaction design framework, develop low- and high-fidelity prototypes, and then apply usability inspection and usability testing methods to validate design decisions.
Open Source Software (7 weeks)
You acquire fundamental skills and awareness of recent technical and business issues regarding open source software. Emphasis is on understanding the impact of open source software on the software industry including licensing and commercialization issues, corporate software evaluation techniques, and business models.
Other Master's Programs
* Electives offerings are based upon student demand and faculty availability.
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