Toolkits, Platforms, Product Lines, and System Design & Management

Today I meant to write about Platforms, Product Lines, Product Line Architectures, and so on... I was especially fueled to do so after a particularly fruitful day back at the office, where I and a few other engineers at Raytheon NCS attended a rather interesting presentation describing a joint effort between Raytheon (my employer) and Microsoft termed "ASPEN" (Advanced Software Productivity Environments, I believe.) I hate to be a tease - but since it is almost all company proprietary, all I can tell you is that it had me thinking all day about toolkits, platforms and product lines... As if I needed that, after a week during which: a) "Mr Platforms" himself, Marc H Meyer (author of "The Power of Product Platforms" and "Fast Path to Corporate Growth") was a guest lecturer in one class. b) I started reading professor Cusumano's book, "Platform Leadership" c) Also started writing a paper related to software toolkits for Von Hippel's class "User Centered Innovation in the Internet Age."

But since I can't share my Raytheon-related thoughts with you, you're just going to have to trust me that it's some really cool stuff. Instead let me turn my ramblings towards the System Design & Management program (SDM) and try to start answering the question, nay cliff-hanger, I closed my first blog post with... It had to do with why I picked SDM -- Let me start with three simple facts:

1) System Design & Management is co-sponsored by the MIT Sloan School of Management and the School of Engineering (SoE), and resides within the Engineering Systems Division.


2) SDM is not an MBA program, but a program that offers a master's in engineering *and* management.

3) SDM Fellows can take advantage of the best of all worlds via a rich curriculum in engineering and management provided by Sloan and the SoE and even the Harvard Business School.

BlogDive

So, here I am: Recently volunteered-for/appointed-to the position of Communications Lead on the MIT System Design and Management Industrial Relations Committee (IRC.) My 'big idea' for spreading the word about the System Design and Management program was "publish, publish, publish..." Encouraging my colleagues in the 2010 cohort to blog and share their ideas, especially with respect to their experiences at MIT. I must note that this notion of "Inbound Marketing" was implanted in my brain by Brian Halligan, HubSpot CEO and founder, whom I met and briefly talked to after a guest appearance in Professor Cusumano's class, The Business of Software (get the book, it's good).

Not wanting to fall into the "do as I say, not as I do" category, I have decided to put my money where my mouth is and start my own blog. The first hurdle encountered when deciding to do so is "where am I going to find the time?" Well, let's just take the dive and see how long we can hold our breath... I think this s going to be a useful exercise - I needed somewhere to brain dump all the crazy ideas and novel notions floating around my head. Or maybe I will publish some of the papers I end up writing for some of my classes. One thing is for sure: I will use this to blog about all the interesting people I get to meet and hear in class, and all of the cool concepts and themes that I encounter along the way..

This year I started the System Design and Management program, a graduate program at MIT's Engineering Systems Division and the Sloan School of Management. There are around 50 others in my cohort, and from day one I was amazed (as I am to this day) with the depth and breadth of experience, culture, and background of this cohort. You name it, and someone in the System Design and Management program knows it. We've got representation from various engineering disciplines. We've got fellows from numerous industries. We're from all over the world. We have on average around 10 years of professional experience... Needless to say there is never a dull moment here.

So why MIT? That's easy and self-explanatory. But why did I choose the System Design and Management program? How does it differ from a traditional MBA? Those are questions I cannot answer in one post. But over the course of time it will become painfully obvious, as over the next two year I use this platform to share my experiences. But for now, I will borrow my favorite line from a presentation I attended last year: "System Design and Management is for those who want to lead engineering, not leave it."