Computer Science Capstone + MBA Program = A Winning Combination

November 4, 2025

I’ve been developing & teaching UW-Madison’s Computer Science Capstone since Fall 2020. The program has been growing ever since. This fall, we’ve got 22 corporate and non-profit partners and 161 students. This includes 11 Product Management MBA students.

Welcoming MBA & UX Masters Students

In Fall 2021, we started to welcome a handful of Product Management MBA students into the program, as well as UX Master’s students. Why? Well, my goal with the course is to give students as much real-world experience as I possibly can. The projects are real problems that our partners want solved and the students work on teams to solve them. What I noticed early-on is that the team structure didn’t mirror what the students would see once they graduated. A team made up entirely of computer science students is missing out on a lot of cross-functional skills. So, as other departments found out about what we were doing, I began to welcome students whose skillsets would enhance the project experience. It seemed like a no-brainer and having these students join us has been an extremely successful endeavor.

Enhancing the MBA Student Partnership

This semester, we took the partnership with our friends at the business school one step forward. Peter Commons and I devised a 1-credit sister course for the Product Management students taking my class. He dives deep into the topics that we cover from the standpoint of Product Management. Now, the teams get even better prepared Product Managers and our MBA students gain expertise and experience they could only previously get from, possibly, a strong internship with a great mentor.

Capstone & MBA Article

If you’d like to hear more about this new course and the partnership, the business school wrote a great article about it. Check out the article here.

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About Amber Field

Amber has over 20 years of experience working in the software industry with agile software teams and specializes in creating efficient, happy teams & clients while helping them scale, execute, and work / live intentionally.
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