Author Profile
Cowan, Alex
Project Management Versus Product Management
Cowan, Alex; Grushka-Cockayne, Yael
OM-1845 | Published November 12, 2025 | 15 Pages Technical Note
Collection: Darden School of Business
Whether formally or informally, we’re all managing projects and refining products. Neither project management nor program management is going anywhere, and every general manager should be familiar wit... Read More
Cybersecurity in the Post-AI Era
OM-1844 | Published November 06, 2025 | 19 Pages Technical Note
Collection: Darden School of Business
Cybersecurity (or just security, as it’s called in tech and as we call it in this note) is no longer a niche responsibility managers can hand off—it’s become a core, strategic function in every compan... Read More
Coding Data Models with AI
Cowan, Alex; Grushka-Cockayne, Yael
OM-1825 | Published December 04, 2024 | 46 pages Technical Note
Collection: Darden School of Business
This note focuses on building models that allow for the effective organization and retrieval of data. It discusses the major steps of designing, creating, and maintaining a model that optimizes user e... Read More
Coding Algorithms with AI
Cowan, Alex; Grushka-Cockayne, Yael
OM-1824 | Published November 20, 2024 | 16 Pages Technical Note
Collection: Darden School of Business
This note focuses on creating controllers—algorithms, in coding speak. These essentially are the logic that tells the software what to do and how to respond to inputs from the user. This note assumes ... Read More
Coding for MBAs in the Age of AI
Cowan, Alex; Grushka-Cockayne, Yael
OM-1822 | Published November 19, 2024 | 9 pages Technical Note
Collection: Darden School of Business
In this note, students will learn how to think about the process of going from design to code like both a general manager and an engineer. Designed for use by students of business who are familiar wit... Read More
Coding User Interfaces with AI
Cowan, Alex; Grushka-Cockayne, Yael
OM-1823 | Published November 18, 2024 | 17 pages Technical Note
Collection: Darden School of Business
It’s a great time to be a creatively confident general manager, whether you're a product manager, a team lead, or in some similar role. AI has made it easier than ever to bring new ideas to life and r... Read More
Diagnosing the Economics of Your Code
Cowan, Alex; Grushka-Cockayne, Yael
OM-1819 | Published October 17, 2024 | 18 pages Technical Note
Collection: Darden School of Business
Managers regularly have to contribute to technical decisions where the specific subject matter is substantially beyond their understanding. This applies even to managers who have a technical backgroun... Read More
Customer Experience Mapping
OM-1820 | Published October 10, 2024 | 10 pages Technical Note
Collection: Darden School of Business
This note is specifically focused on customer experience (CX) mapping for work in digital product management. In digital, there’s a major focus on the idea of "product-market fit" (p-m fit). The basic... Read More
Wielding Design
OM-1818 | Published October 08, 2024 | 17 Pages Technical Note
Collection: Darden School of Business
Generalists need to understand enough about the key disciplines in their companies to effectively engage with their collaborators. That doesn’t mean being an expert; it does, however, mean knowing eno... Read More
Designing Digital User Experiences
OM-1739 | Published June 02, 2023 | 17 Pages Technical Note
Collection: Darden School of Business
Over the last two decades, no design job in tech has grown more than user experience (UX) design, the process of creating increasingly better user interfaces for a particular product experience. The e... Read More
Digital Product Management with Hypothesis-Driven Development
OM-1740 | Published April 13, 2023 | 23 pages Technical Note
Collection: Darden School of Business
This technical note introduces readers to hypothesis-driven design (HDD) in digital product management. HDD operates from the foundation that ideas should be testable and teams should work to minimize... Read More
The Testable Design
OM-1737 | Published August 10, 2021 | 11 pages Case
Collection: Darden School of Business
This case offers applied practice for students in drafting testable user stories (agile), including the use of jobs-to-be-done, storyboards, and metrics to drive toward a specific, testable digital de... Read More
Growth Hacking Online Education
Grushka-Cockayne, Yael; Cowan, Alex
OM-1719 | Published April 29, 2021 | 29 pages Case
Collection: Darden School of Business
This case explores the work of a Darden faculty member, Alex Cowan, to assess the demand for a public version of the software development course he taught at Darden. It was no secret that with the tec... Read More
Saving Griffin
Grushka-Cockayne, Yael; Cowan, Alex; Turse, Jason
OM-1717 | Published March 15, 2021 | 14 pages Case
Collection: Darden School of Business
This case is designed to introduce general management students to applied digital transformation at the program level. The Griffin Program is a midsized but high-stakes program in the US Special Opera... Read More
Agile Development
Cowan, Alex; Grushka-Cockayne, Yael
OM-1711 | Published January 20, 2021 | 10 pages Technical Note
Collection: Darden School of Business
This technical note is designed to introduce general management students to the body of work associated with agile and its current state of practice. While anchored in a simple 68-word manifesto, agil... Read More
The Win You Design
OM-1707 | Published November 11, 2020 | 10 pages Case
Collection: Darden School of Business
This case is designed to introduce general management students to the process of early-stage customer discovery for a new venture, be it entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial. Andrew, an HR manager, had ... Read More