Managing Technical Professionals and Organizations is a course that explains the ways in which research and development (R&D) employees differ from other workers and how you can apply more appropriate and effective management techniques. In this course students will learn a variety of ways to motivate, manage, and lead R&D professionals and how to get and keep research teams working together efficiently and effectively. We will focus on individual contributors and members of project teams, including cross-functional teams, and examine how to work effectively with prima donnas and independent spirits.

Course Outcome

After completing Managing Technical Professionals and Organizations, students will be equipped with a basic understanding of the following:

• How to determine the best strategy for overcoming a given challenge of managing highly skilled research professionals
• How to apply strategies for building trust with research professionals in given scenarios
• How to identify examples of strategies for motivating research professionals to perform at their best

No previous experience or coursework required

Students will be assigned 5 homework assignments, and a final project for each course.

Module 1

Getting started: the basics ● Android architectural overview ● Standard development environment for Android applications ● Alternative approaches ● Challenges of the mobile platform ● Putting it all together

Module 2

Anatomy of an Android Application ● Creating a new Android Application ● The Android project structure ● Activities ● User interface – the basics ● Tying it all together

Module 3

Android support within Eclipse ● The Android perspective ● Emulator ● Delvik Debug Monitoring Service

Module 4

User Interfaces – a closer look ● Simple Toasts ● Standard view layouts: ● Basic widgets: ● Formatting: Dips and SPS ● Context menu and alert text ● General UI strategies for mobile devices

Module 5

Persistent storage in Android ● Database support ● File I/O ● Serialization ● Preferences

Module 6

Activity LifeCycle ● Programming in the mobile environment ● Activity lifecycle phases ● Example application

Module 7

Beyond simple applications ● Writing multi Activity applications ● Communication between Activities ● Activities without interfaces

This course is Instructor-led and delivered through our award-winning online Learning Management System