IT Business Management

Facilitator: Peter Ivanov

This module is based on series of highly interactive and practical business exercises and case study discussions. The underlying approach behind the module is to illustrate and practice the managerial and interpersonal competences in a complex multi-dimensional environment.

Through various workshop exercises the participants are led through the manager’s discovery of their strengths, they are equipped with practical guidance to set the vision and goals of their team, guided how to establish communication structures and an optimal team culture – thus laying the foundation for a successful team management. The module is based on the award winning method “The 10 Big Rocks” where the 10 key success factors are designed appropriately to relate to the reality of the manager’s personal team and organization.

Upon completing this module, participants will be able to:

• Discover the manager’s strengths and how to leverage on them;
• Set aspirational team vision;
• Define annual team goals;
• Establish robust communication structure and engagement rules;
• Plan the establishment of the winning spirit;
• Set aspirational “prize”;
• Better understand the issues and enablers in team management environment, raises awareness and suggest approaches how to tackle and leverage them.

Facilitator: Ioannis Papaconstantinou

People analytics is a data-driven approach to managing people at work. Business leaders should make decisions about their people based on analysis of data rather than the traditional methods of personal relationships, decision making based on experience, or risk avoidance. This module will explain how data analysis is brought to bear on people-related issues, such as recruiting, performance evaluation, leadership, hiring and promotion, job design, compensation, and collaboration.

By the end of this course, participants will understand how and when hard data is used to make soft-skill decisions about hiring and talent development, so that they can position themselves as strategic partners in their company’s talent management decisions.

The class will cover the use of data and analytics in relation to key issues that define team management and performance. Key topics to be covered:

• From Hiring to performance
• Defining team “effectiveness”
• Collecting data and measuring effectiveness
• Purpose as the cornerstone of team effectiveness
• Identifying dynamics of effective teams
• Measuring the dynamics of the team
• Strategies for improving team effectiveness
• Foster psychological safety
• Help teams take action.

Facilitator: Tsvetoslava Kyoseva

In this, simulation-based, module participants take on the role of a senior project manager and manage a team tasked with developing a new product for an electronics manufacturing company. The primary objectives are to execute a project plan successfully and deliver a competitive product on time and on budget.
Various scenarios will expose participants to realistic challenges that project managers often face, especially when working in a highly competitive industry.

Learning objective:

• Explore trade-offs among the three major project management levers: scope, resources, and schedule.
• Understand how team skill level, team morale, deadlines, and work quality are interrelated and affected by a project manager's decisions.
• Analyze the effect of poor-quality work on project outcomes.
• Understand the importance of appropriately timed changes in allocating resources.
• React to unanticipated events and managing uncertainty.
• Set realistic project objectives and minimize scope changes.

This module is based on the Harvard Business Publishing’s online simulation “Project Management Simulation: Scope, Resources, Schedule” and the Harvard Business School Reading “Project Management Manual”.

Facilitator: Tsvetoslava Kyoseva

In a rapidly changing environment, businesses need to evolve and continuously adapt to new challenges. This module provides and exercises the skills and knowledge that enables the participants to understand the challenges that innovative entrepreneurs face in their businesses.  It deals with the commercialization of new ideas, high-tech innovations, business development and tapping into new markets. Participants will learn how an innovators’ orientation helps companies to position themselves in a business ecosystem. At the end, the module will help them develop a creative mindset and their innovative capabilities.

Key topics to be covered:

• Types of innovations
• Innovations life cycle
• Pioneer vs. follower: the time-to-market dilemma
• Sources of innovations
• The process of organizing the innovations: outside-in and inside-out processes
• Innovations organization structure: closed and open innovations
• Innovation process roles
• Innovations pricing: value-based pricing
• Resources assessment
• The new product launch
• Innovations management as a recurring process.

Facilitator: Tsvetoslava Kyoseva

This module, based on a highly interactive online simulation, allows participants to play the role of a business unit manager at a battery company facing the classic Innovator’s Dilemma. Participants have to manage R&D investment tradeoffs between the unit’s existing battery technology versus investing in a new, potentially disruptive battery technology. Over the course of eight simulated years, participants must address a number of challenges including the timing and level of investment across both mature and new businesses, choices regarding market opportunities and inherent product performance characteristics, requirements to meet constraining financial objectives and constant trade-offs between investment options, all in the context of uncertain market information.

Learning outcomes:

• Best opportunities for new products are not visible early on. New applications can appear unattractive, but often represent best long-term opportunity.
• Timing and level of R&D spending is difficult to gauge.
• Assessing emerging market opportunities is difficult using standard approaches.
• Balancing dual requirements for simultaneously investing in core business and innovation is challenging.
• Constraining financial criteria and an organization's impatience for growth can make innovation difficult.

This module is based on the Harvard Business Publishing’s online simulation “Strategic Innovation Simulation: Black Bay Battery” and the innovation classic book – “The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms To Fail” – both authored by Clayton M. Christensen.

Facilitator: Nikola Bogdanov

Organizations today are seeking ways to improve the efficiency of their software development efforts while still meeting quality objectives. Competitive pressures and customer demands continue to reduce software product release schedules, driving organizations to seek fresh new approaches to building software. Agile software development methods are often cited as a way to accelerate software delivery and get more done with less. This module will present and practice how to avoid the common mistakes of agile adopters and address some of the common misuses.

This module will present a roadmap for how to get started with agile along with practical advices. It will introduce you to agile software development concepts and teach you how to make them work. You will learn what agile is all about, why agile works, and how to effectively plan and develop software using agile principles. Running case studies allow you to apply the techniques you are learning as you go through the course.

Learning objective:

• Plan iterations based on relative effort and business value
• Managing requirements using agile
• Defining and estimating user stories
• Building a release plan
• Manage, design, test and model Agile software projects

This module is based on the Harvard Business Publishing’s case studies: “Team Wikispeed: Developing Hardware the Software Way” and “cmm versus Agile: Methodology Wars in Software Development”.

Here are the following sessions: