MBA Systems

Since 2000, MBA Systems has been added to many a b-school specialisation. Glorified technical jargon with a decent spreading of strategy talk is what most b-schools in India dish out in the name of IT and IS Management. Any engineer worth his communication skills gets picked up in the IT sector these days, without much ado. A closer look at what skills are imparted in b-schools in the name of IT management is enough to show the widening gap between IT Industry standards and b-school training standards.

Any Indian b-school curriculum(even the IIM's) look at IT & Systems as another glorified MCA course. Forget the specialisation, many of them donot have a curriculum. For a b-school, IT& Systems starts and ends with a subject and its variants-Management Information Systems [MIS]. All other courses offered are variants of the same. Infact, the concept of MIS has changed over the years and today there is more than transaction processing systems (Intelligent Decision Support Systems, Expert Systems). Many b-schools follow the text book based MIS appraoches (Laudon & Laudon, O'Brien) which are out dated and obsolete. Just like a shop floor manager who cannot manage the shop floor without understanding the process (how the machine, lathes work), an IT manager cannot manage technical people with jargons and powerpoint presentations on what is data-mining (cliche).

The outcome of this "global" -"jargon-based" approach devoid of any fundamental knowledge base doesnot serve any good for IT companies that recruit the students in large numbers. Many b-schools manufacture an "IT specialisation" by offering programming courses, while the students believe that an IT&Systems Job is that of a Software Programmer, who gets paid at a higher scale that his engineer counter part.

MBA Systems is much beyond "coding". The IT Industry in India has outgrown the requirement for developers and solution providers. The Industry requires Domain specialists, Solution Designers, and Skilled Project Managers. High value jobs require specialists, not generalists who come with a mix of marketing, finance and looking to learn technical skills on the job. The Industry requires managers with good technical skills, who understand and manage technology efficiently. The training should revolve around managing life-cycle projects, managing requirements,bridging the technical team and client requirements (requires understanding of design, implementation, financial management, and strategy). Teaching Datamining and e-commerce through power-point slides doesnot create IT Management awareness, neither does discussing a case study about outsourcing and Infosys. The classroom is the most dangerous place to look at the outside world(a chinese proverb). Learning by doing is the key, and every MBA systems manager should know how to select appropriate technology, how to price high -technology products, how to understand and articulate client requirements and liase with the technical team.

So what makes up the ideal MBA systems training?

Peter Balo in his Case Study on IS Curriculum identifies a matrix of Business, Information, and Strategy with Organisation Strategy, Structures, and Operations as a requirement for any IS curriculum. Prof. Bharat Rao's, (IIM-Lucknow) article is the only available online guide on what makes an MBA Systems program (India Infoline, 11 November 2004). There are some relatively niche b-schools like Goa Institute of Management, which have exhaustive curriculum designed based on SEI-CMU training standards. Only, IIM-Bangalore's Post Graduate program in Software Management meets Industry standards.