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tips for Capstone

In my recent review of Michael Fern, my professor in the final course in the MBA program (known as Capstone), I mentioned a few tips on surviving the class.  I thought they might merit a post on their own.  So here they are…

6 person teams – The most important part of the entire class, IMO, is finding the right team.  Find the right people, the right mix of skills, and the right set of personalities to be as productive as you can be.  If that’s 4 people, great.

Having said that, you’ll want to try to get to 6 people if you can find the right ones.  Just think about the roles that are needed and/or the sections to be covered:

  1. Integrator (and make sure you have 1-2 others that will look over things at the end, too)
  2. External Analysis (this might be 2 people easily)
  3. Financial Analysis (need a 2nd set of eyes here, too)
  4. Corporate Strategy (linked to Business Level)
  5. Business Level Strategy (linked to Corporate)
  6. Exhibits (collecting, making them look consistent, etc, which requires a single person at the end)

So I indicate 6 people there, but note that some areas will need more people and help.  Imagine doing all of that with fewer than 6.  Also, this doesn’t even consider the Intro section, the Synthesis or Recommendations.  The last part really needs to be done as a team, then written up by 1 person.

Collaboration tools – One of the biggest issues I’ve had with the Leavey School of Business over the last 3 years is that the school doesn’t really provide anything that aids collaboration.

During Capstone, you will be going through financial statements and making exhibits(documents), articles (often web pages), and communicating every which way (e-mail, phone, real-time screen-sharing).  You’ll want ways of keeping all files in one location, being able to have multiple people edit a single file, communicate with the group, and probably doing a kind of real-time, video/phone conference session with shared documents.

We utilized the following:

  1. Mailing list – we used google, but whatever will work.  This was used just for e-mails.
  2. Dropbox.com – We kept all of our relatively static documents here.  Financial statements and various other electronic sources, plus our drafts of each section.  The 2GB you get here and unlimited file size were the key factors here (Google Lists’ files section has a file size and capacity limit).
  3. Google Docs – for the few documents that we wanted to truly quickly collaborate on.  The best example is the Bibliography, which we just kept adding to as we found and entered citations.
  4. vyew.com – This was the best free tool we found where we could all talk together (they offer a conference call number for free), look at documents simultaneously, and mark them up as needed.  For instance, if we felt that an exhibit posted should look differently, then any one of us could use the pen tool and just draw on it.  The person in charge of that area could then make the real changes, share them again, etc.

Ground Rules – Set these early.  Good ones are:

  1. Citation style – MLA is probably the easiest.  Don’t let anyone cite anything without using the style, or it’ll likely slip by in the final edit.
  2. Receptivity to changes – you can discuss changes that the integrator made to a section, but you can’t be arguing about it and no one can go about feeling hurt because a paragraph was edited out or whatever.
  3. When and how often you’ll be meeting – we agreed early on that we would meet “as often as we needed, for as long as we needed” and acknowledged that during the quarter we would meet more often and for longer periods of time.
  4. What you will do in case of writer’s block, lack of data, help needed on something, etc.  How will you respond, as a team, to obstacles?

June 12, 2010 Biz School, , , , , , 0 Read more >

Review: Michael Fern, Management, Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business

Management 619:  Something or Other but known as:  CAPSTONE
At a glance

  • 3 unit course offered every quarter but summer
  • Workload:  Ridiculously Heavy
  • Teaching Style:  Discussion, case-based
  • Interest in students: Very High
  • Relevance to outside world: Ridiculously High

Overall Professor Rating: 4.5

Overall Course Rating: 5

Note:  Since this is the last required course in the entire program, it is one heckuva class.  It beats you down, it brings you together, it pulls you apart.  But you learn a tremendous amount from it.

About Me

I haven’t done one of these reviews in a while.  The truth is that 1) I have gotten worn down a bit by the program so I have been less motivated to write about my courses and 2) I have a bit of senioritis.  I actually am going to be walking in my commencement this Friday, so I’m easily distracted, I guess.

I started the program almost 3 years ago – March of 2007.  During the past years, I have had trouble finding good, expansive reviews of faculty and/or courses.  So I started writing these.   There are lots of sites out there that provide feedback and rates – ratemyprofessor is the most notable. The SantaClaraMBA Yahoo group also has a big database of comments and lots of additional information in its message archive. That database can be a bit hard to wade through, and the comments are short and often just link to other threads, which are themselves pretty short and superficial. Only here can I write as much as I want  🙂

I review professors from a variety of perspectives.  First, I explain the context(s) under which I took the class.  Time of year, time of day, etc.  Then I talk about the quality of the class and the professor, and finally about the professor as a person.  After all, we are trying to learn about our interactions with people, so knowing that side of a teacher is critical, too.  So these would be interactions outside the classroom, etc.  I also just write whatever it is that I think is relevant or will be helpful to others.  That is my overall goal.

The facts

I took MGMT 619 in Winter 2010, in the 7:20 section.  This was the best quarter for me, as it interfered the least with any other event at my work.  Capstone is not a class with which to be trifled, and I wanted to make sure I planned it correctly.  This is also the only course about which I warned my manager that I would “check out” at some point from my job responsibilities.  This is important – be careful about when you take Capstone.

Selecting a team is critically important for Capstone.  Unlike some other final courses for MBA programs, this is all about teamwork, rather than an individual thesis.  I received emails throughout the summer if I was available to be on a team in the Fall, and then again for the Winter.

I was lucky in that many of my classmates from my very first class – MGMT 501 – whom I knew well, considered friends, and had worked with in the past, were all taking the course at the same time.  It is true that one never knows what will happen with any team, even one composed of people whom you know.  But at the very least, this is a case of the “devil you know” being better than the devil you don’t.  And trust me – at some point, during all the stress of Capstone the devil does make an appearance.

Fern is one of 3-4 faculty in the management department that teach Capstone.  The number of sections offered depends on how many petition to take the course by a certain deadline.  For instance, there were 3 sections in the Fall, 2 in the Winter, and I think 4 in the Spring.  Some of the other faculty that teach the course include Madsen, Levehagen, and Chandy.

(more…)

June 7, 2010 Reviews of Professors, , , , , 1 Read more >

Review: Judith White, Management, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University

Management 713:  Introduction to Sustainable Development
 At a glance

  • 1 unit course first offered Fall 2009
  • Workload:  Heavy final paper
  • Teaching Style:  Discussion
  • Interest in students: High
  • Relevance to outside world: High

Overall Professor Rating: 2 (though this might be because this was the first time the course was offered)

Overall Course Rating: 3 (should be higher, but it needed more organization

Note:  Like many 1-unit courses, Professor White proposed this course as a full, 3-unit class to the department.  Apparently, they decided that it was best to do this on a trial basis as a 1-unit course and to see how it went.  However, as I have learned this quarter, this can lead to inconsistencies.  In this case, while I think the workload was a bit up and down, it was more that I didn’t really know what was going on, what was expected of me, etc, from class to class.  We only met 3 times, but I think I got far more confused than I should have been in 10 or so hours of class time.

About Me

I haven’t done one of these reviews in a while.  The truth is that 1) I have gotten worn down a bit by the program so I have been less motivated to write about my courses and 2) I have a bit of senioritis.  In fact, I just came home from an 8 hour marathon session with my Capstone team, to work on our first case.  But the truth is that I do care about providing useful information to my fellow classmates and those that might take these classes down the road.  So I’ll spend a bit of time now writing…

I started the program almost 3 years ago – March of 2007.  I am now in Capstone, which is, as you can imagine from the title, the final course in the program.  During the past years, I have had trouble finding good, expansive reviews of faculty and/or courses.  So I started writing these.   There are lots of sites out there that provide feedback and rates – ratemyprofessor is the most notable. The SantaClaraMBA Yahoo group also has a big database of comments and lots of additional information in its message archive. That database can be a bit hard to wade through, and the comments are short and often just link to other threads, which are themselves pretty short and superficial. Only here can I write as much as I want  🙂

I review professors from a variety of perspectives.  First, I explain the context(s) under which I took the class.  Time of year, time of day, etc.  Then I talk about the quality of the class and the professor, and finally about the professor as a person.  After all, we are trying to learn about our interactions with people, so knowing that side of a teacher is critical, too.  So these would be interactions outside the classroom, etc.  I also just write whatever it is that I think is relevant or will be helpful to others.  That is my overall goal.

The facts

I took MGMT 713 in Fall Quarter, 2009.  The course, “Introduction to Sustainable Development,” started off, I believe, as an undergraduate class that was proposed to the MBA program.  Professor White has been with the school, apparently, for some time now – she is not a new hire.

This is a 1-unit course that the school was evaluating for possibility of conversion to a full 3 unit one.  It is offered again this quarter, Winter 2010, as  1 unit.

To be clear, this course is about environmental sustainability in business management.  I was worried that it would be about how to keep a company going (sustainable…), but was glad when my fears were allayed.  Now, it did take about 3 very confusing e-mails to figure that out, but at least I got the facts straight in the end.

Them’s the facts (slim as they are). Now read on for the review. (more…)

January 30, 2010 Reviews of Professors, , , , 0 Read more >

preaching to the choir, making us not want to go to church

I am taking a class right now about developing sustainable products and methods in business.  This goes from management to organizational design.  On the face, it is an extremely interesting topic and I applaud the SCU Business School for having a course dedicated just to this topic.

Unfortunately, it’s a terribly-designed course.

First, while it is a 1 unit course and many students take a few of these just to get an extra unit here or there rather than a full 3 unit class with all the work that entails, I would venture that most students in this class have a pre-existing interest in sustainability.  We were drawn to the course by its title, but the concept of thinking about this topic as we move forward with our careers, etc.  The students in this class are there because we are interested in this topic.

Of course, any course that one takes as an elective is, to some extent, preaching to the choir.  We elect to take the course because the topic interests us, and therefore the professor is telling us stuff we want to hear and with which we largely agree.  Maybe we want to be stimulated about the topic and will put up a bit of an instinctive fight, but I would be shocked if someone took an elective and he or she flat out hated the topic.

However, in this case all the preaching to this particular choir has many of us not wanting to go to church anymore.  It’s not that all the issues about the environment and how companies and organizations and even just people in general aren’t important – of course they are.  And nothing will shake my own personal beliefs about the importance of change today.  But for a 1 unit course, this is making being interested in the environment off-putting, to be honest, and that’s a terrible shame.  I know that there are a billion reasons to care about the environment, and thousands of ways of analyzing a person’s or company’s environmental “footprint.”  But if one tried to assimilate all of those reasons at once, and is then given an assignment that could easily become a dissertation in terms of research and detail, it can kill motivation.  Simply saying “but don’t go into more depth than you have to for the topic” doesn’t counter “contact your vendor, find out what process they use, from where they get their supplies, then contact those suppliers and…”  You get the idea.

There are other aspects of the course that really discourage me, but those are about the professor and I will get to that in one of my reviews later.  But the point is that we’re there to have discussions about what we can do, as humans, as employees at companies, and as ambitious students who are pursuing an MBA and hope to move up in our careers, to develop sustainable methods.  I think we’re there to look at things we can do.  Talking about what a CEO did to change his entire company and then saying that we have to go that deep on our own projects, when most of us are middle-management at best, is ludicrous in my opinion.  It’s like asking a line-level worker to implement Six Sigma.  There has to be buy-in from all levels.

My point, to be clear, is that to basically assault students with this much information, to ask them to analyze everything from 300 different perspectives, to give examples of what we “could” do that potentially involves weeks and weeks of research, for 1 unit and 9 total hours of class time is simply overwhelming.

And one of the last topics about which one should become overwhelmed and perhaps frustrated to this point is the environment.  We are dangerously close to thinking of trying to develop sustainable practices as too hard.

October 17, 2009 Biz School, , 0 Read more >

Review: Linda Kamas, Economics, Leavey School of Business

ECON 405:  Macroeconomics
At a glance

  • Workload:  Moderate
  • Teaching Style:  Lecture
  • Interest in students: High
  • Relevance to outside world: High, especially if you’re into economics

Overall Professor Rating: 3 (she can get a bit impatient at times)

Overall Course Rating: 4 (but she can also make the course entertaining while getting the teaching across

The Review

This is the latest of my reviews on the professors I’ve had while an MBA student at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business. There are lots of sites out there that provide feedback and rates – ratemyprofessor is the most notable. The SantaClaraMBA Yahoo group also has a big database of comments and lots of additional information in its message archive. That database can be a bit hard to wade through, and the comments are short and often just link to other threads, which are themselves pretty short and superficial. Only here can I write as much as I want  🙂

I review professors from a variety of perspectives.  First, I explain the context(s) under which I took the class.  Time of year, time of day, etc.  Then I talk about the quality of the class and the professor, and finally about the professor as a person.  After all, we are trying to learn about our interactions with people, so knowing that side of a teacher is critical, too.  So these would be interactions outside the classroom, etc.  I also just write whatever it is that I think is relevant or will be helpful to others.  That is my overall goal.

The facts

I took ECON 405, Macroeconomics, in Winter 2009.  This is the second of two required economics courses, and Professor Kamas teaches several sections.  I took the later section of the evening, and I think that some of my comments about her patience, etc might be a result of that.

Them’s the facts (slim as they are). Now read on for the review.
(more…)

September 18, 2009 Reviews of Professors, , , , , 0 Read more >

Biz School @ 2 Years: Hitting the Wall?

I think I may have hit the wall after 2 years in the evening MBA program at Santa Clara University. 

Bear in mind that, as an evening program I, like many of my classmates, work all day long, then go to 1.5-3 hours of classes at night.  Generally we either go for 1.5 hours 4 nights a week or 3 hours 2 nights a week.  We then do homework on the nights in between and I generally dedicate one whole weekend day to make sure I get everything done.  I juggle a lot of things.

I started the program Spring 2007 so I am literally 2 years in.  I am just about finished, as well.  I decided to wait a bit to maximize my odds of taking the final class, dubbed Capstone, along with a group of people that would make a good team.  

For some reason, I am struggling far more this quarter than in previous ones.  Below 70% on one midterm (though exam percentage for the class is cumulative over 3 tests), about 80% on the true midterm (25% of grade) in my other class.  In both cases, I clearly knew the material but just didn’t focus enough on the test.  That’s a sign of being lazy and/or getting tired.  

I know it’s difficult to work and go to school (and run a business).  But I have handled it so far so I’m a bit surprised.  And while there is a part of me that is frustrated at not excelling, I am now worried about getting dual low-B’s…which means I need to be worried about the possibility of C’s.  

Hopefully things will pick back up in the Summer, when I take only one class, and then in the Fall when I’m hopefully rejuvenated from the Summer break.  But that’s a hope.

May 7, 2009 Biz School, Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts 3 Read more >

“I’m studying management”

When I’m interacting with classmates in my MBA program, especially when I’m meeting someone new, I am often asked “what is your concentration?”  Many people answer that they are pursuing the finance track, or economics, or perhaps operations.  I say that I am pursuing the management and leadership concentrations (they are two separate ones).

I have to admit that I always feel a bit like an underachiever when I answer that way.  Like back in my undergrad days when I said I was majoring in History.  There was always this dangling question of “oh, and what is your “real” major?”  Now it’s as if learning about management is some kind of fall-back or perhaps even illegitimate field of study for someone getting an MBA.

Part of this is because I am in fact not very good at finance or economics, though I’m deeply interested in both.  I would love to be able to gauge beta and risk and how to create arbitrage scenarios while managing a hedge fund, or spend my day (seriously – my entire day) looking at how macro-economic policies shift our currency trends and overall national conditions.  

But, those aren’t my strengths.  I’m not sure I’m a great leader or manager so maybe my strengths aren’t there, either, but “running things” is something I’ve generally been good at since I was in high school.  Allocating resources, creative problem-solving, working with others – that’s just breathing to me, most of the time.  In the end, it may turn out I’m a management asthmatic, but for now I feel it’s what I’m good at, and it’s what I am pursuing. 

But it is kind of weird to say that I’m studying how to be better at management.  Too broad or something.

March 5, 2009 Biz School, Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, 2 Read more >

Review: Kevin Walsh, IDIS, Leavey School of Business

At a glance

  • Workload:  Light
  • Teaching Style:  Guest lectures, some interactive sessions
  • Interest in students: Unclear
  • Relevance to outside world: High

Overall Professor Rating: 3-4 (hard to tell due to so many guest lecturers)

Overall Course Rating: 4 (but them guest lecturers are good!)

IDIS 612 is an interesting course.  It’s basically all guest lecturers, but they are good ones, as Professor Walsh knows a LOT of people in some seriously powerful positions.  I recommend the course to anyone wanting to take a qualitative and, in all honesty, easy course while taking another, much harder one in the same quarter.  You get a lot out of it, while not beating yourself up with two difficult courses.

The Review

This is the latest of my reviews on the professors I’ve had while an MBA student at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business. There are lots of sites out there that provide feedback and rates – ratemyprofessor is the most notable. The SantaClaraMBA Yahoo group also has a big database of comments and lots of additional information in its message archive. That database can be a bit hard to wade through, and the comments are short and often just link to other threads, which are themselves pretty short and superficial. Only here can I write as much as I want  🙂

I review professors from a variety of perspectives.  First, I explain the context(s) under which I took the class.  Time of year, time of day, etc.  Then I talk about the quality of the class and the professor, and finally about the professor as a person.  After all, we are trying to learn about our interactions with people, so knowing that side of a teacher is critical, too.  So these would be interactions outside the classroom, etc.  I also just write whatever it is that I think is relevant or will be helpful to others.  That is my overall goal.

This review goes way back to Fall 2008, so just last quarter.  It’s a bit later than I had hoped to do, as is obviously the one for IDIS 696 Social Benefit Entrepreneurship, which I also took last quarter and will write in the next few days.

The facts

I took IDIS 612 in Fall 2008, Mondays and Wednesdays, 5:45-7 (this is the new first slot in Leavey’s 2-course-per-night schedule).  Professor Walsh is an adjunct with significant ties to Silicon Valley and a number of high-ranking executives, from start-up CEO’s to marketing presidents at large companies.  

Them’s the facts (slim as they are). Now read on for the review.
(more…)

January 26, 2009 Reviews of Professors, , , 1 Read more >

Getting school over with…or not

I was having the conversation with a classmate the other day about trying to take Capstone, our final class in our MBA program, this spring quarter.  I know a few people who are taking it in spring so there is incentive (it’s a team-based course).  However, I would have to change my schedule a bit and take an extra course next quarter to finish all my requirements in time.  Or, if I really wanted to get in on spring, I could have taken just one of my remaining three required, core courses this quarter and been all set.

However, it makes me wonder about the timing of the program, and the sense of urgency to just get it over with.  This goes hand in hand with previous posts about why I choose certain classes taught by certain professors over the same course by a different one and my progress thus far.  I don’t feel a particular urgency to get the program done, though I will admit that I’m getting a bit jaded lately and the fatigue of going to classes at night after working a full day is not something I will miss when I am done.

But, with a course as important as Capstone, it’s rather important for me to make sure I have a professor from whom I will learn a great deal, and with whom I will be able to create a solid business plan (that’s the real purpose of the course).  So making sure that I take courses such that I can take Capstone at my earliest possible moment…not so sure about that.  I’m pretty comfortable setting myself up for Fall term for Capstone (though I hope I know some folks in the class).

I’m also quite lucky – my work will start paying for up to 2 classes per quarter starting next term, and that is a benefit I want to take advantage of for at least 2-3 terms.  It gives me the freedom to wait until the right Capstone professor comes along.  Few enjoy this option.  But even those that do, many are determined to power through as quickly as possible.

The MBA will come in time.  Instead of 2 years I’m looking at 2.5.  Almost certainly less than 3.  That’s pretty okay with me.

October 17, 2008 Biz School, , 0 Read more >