Service science, Management, and Engineering

The final state exam consist of diploma thesis defense and oral exam. The oral part assesses the knowledge gained during studies and also possibly experience obtained during the interim project. There are typically two topics picked, discussed and evaluated. The state exam committee members have also the students' reports from their Interim projects at hand.

Service Systems and IT Fundamentals

1. Service systems fundamentals. Service dominant logic, differences from product dominant logic. Service system, its elements, and relations. Cooperating and dual service system. Value proposition and value co-creation, mention-use principle. Basic approaches to information, information gap and moral hazard, solutions, information asymmetry. Application of service science in information gap problem. (PA194)
2. IT as a Service. Concept of providing IT as a Service. Providing IT service and its models. Four-diamond model. Business model frameworks, Canvas, Lean Canvas, their differences. Service execution, differences in providing common and IT services. (PA181)
3. Information system modeling. Structural and behavioral system modeling. Decomposition and balancing of information system models. Modeling of time dimension. Mind maps and work breakdown structure (WBS). UML, use case diagrams, class diagrams and interaction diagrams. Process models. State machine models. Data models and data normalization. Software engineering lifecycle, agile development, Unified Process (UP). Software metrics, physics, effort estimation. Software quality. (PA116, PA179, PA017, PV258)
4. Software architectures. Fundamental concepts of software architectures. Layered architecture of modern information systems, model-view-controller. Service-oriented architecture (SOA). Deployment. Basic concepts of cloud computing. (PA017, PV217, PA053, PA165)
5. Distributed Systems and Clouds. Basic notions, principles. Difference between centric and distributed system architectures. Virtualization, horizontal / vertical scalability. Data sharding, high-availability. Examples of existing technology and their use. Web services, example of implementation (SOAP / WSDL / REST). (PA152, PA195, PA053, PA200, PV217)
6. Computer Networks. Concepts, principles, architectures. OSI model, Internet protocols, static and dynamic routing. Basic computer network services, network security. (PA151, PA159, PA191)
7. Databases. Relational database management systems, terminology, principles. Data representation and storage. Query processing and optimization, statistics, table partitioning. Indexing and hashing, multi-attribute indexing. Transaction processing, recovery. Security, access control, SQL attacks. (PA152)
8. Information Security. Security policy, creation, development and promotion. Risk analysis, its role and methods. Security evaluation, its criteria and evaluation processes. Digital signature, public key management. User authentication, secret information, tokens, biometrics. Authorization and access control. (PV017, PA018, PV157, PV079)

Management and Marketing

1. Project Management. International standards of project management. Project, Program, Portfolio (PPP). Lifecycles of IT projects. Process groups in a project. Project scheduling. Project cost calculation. Gantt diagrams and project milestones. Network analysis, Critical Path Method (CPM), Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT). Project quality assurance, tests, reviews, measurements and standards. (PA179)
2. Business process management. Business process modeling, Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN-standard). Business process management system (BPMS), business rules and human tasks in business processes. Relationship of Business process management and service-oriented architecture. (PV207)
3. Service management. IT service management, principle, processes, outsourcing. Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), basic concepts, service infrastructure management. (PV203, PV214)
4. Management, marketing and project management relationships in service systems. Basics of the management analysis (PESTE, SWOT, 6C). Stakeholders and their interests. Management by competences, theory of vitality. Strategic company orientation and planning. People evaluation and motivation. Strategic management, synergy and its role in management and leadership. (PA182, PV215, PV237)
5. Marketing of Services. Marketing basics, understanding service, markets, products and customers. Cooperation with customers. Win-win strategies. Marketing Mix, types of it and their differences. Relationship marketing. Marketing research, quantitative and qualitative methods. (PV240, PV216)
6. Fundamental economics. Financial background of providing services, financial management, profitability. Basic key indicators, return on investments (ROI), return on equity (ROE), return on assets (ROA), return on sales (ROS). Function of public sector, eGovernment, principles of taxation. (PV241, ESF: BPV_ZVFS, PV166, PV118)
7. Communication. Communication theories. Moderation techniques. Levels of learning, knowledge, skills, attitudes. Active listening. Person Centered Communication. Groups and teams, group process, team building, self-managed teams. Conflict management and transformation. (PV206, PV209)