Curriculum Architect — ICAD's Seven-Week Sprint

A four-round, advanced executive-education design simulation set inside Instituto Cumbre de Alta Dirección (ICAD), the exec-ed arm of a Monterrey private university billing ~MXN 210M/year, AACSB-accredited and preparing an EQUIS review. On Tuesday 14 April 2026 a MXN 60-billion industrial group signs a custom "Leading Enterprise Transformation" program for 35 directors with a hard launch on Monday 1 June and committee sign-off due Friday 8 May. The design must be locked in seven weeks under four binding constraints: a 96 contact-hour envelope (12 days × 8h, cut from a 140h scope — 44h must go), six contractually-required learning outcomes (strategy execution, financial acumen, leading change, customer/market, digital, personal leadership), only 9 of 28 core faculty free in the window with the two strongest change professors already committed, and an assurance-of-learning audit trail where an outcome that is taught but never assessed is an audit failure — with 20% of ICAD's fee tied to a post-program outcome assessment and a rival business school already pitching the client. Playing the program design team, you (1) DIAGNOSE the brief — frame the constraints as one joint system, read the coverage matrix to find gaps and redundancies, and confirm the hours math against the 96h cap; (2) SEQUENCE & SELECT modules to fit 96 hours into a deliberate foundations → application → integration → personal-leadership arc rather than a playlist of good sessions; (3) set the FACULTY-vs-PRACTITIONER delivery mix without strip-mining the two star professors or hollowing out qualified-faculty coverage, and design ASSESSMENTS that evidence each outcome (pre/post diagnostic, applied project on the client's real transformation, faculty-graded deliverable); and (4) DEFEND the design to the quality-and-accreditation committee chair with the client CHRO in the room. The math rewards a coherent, assessment-aligned design that clears all four KPIs at once — and punishes the five classic errors: coverage over capacity (blowing the 96h cap), a playlist with no arc, star-faculty overload, outcomes taught but never assessed, and practitioner-everywhere staffing. Final KPIs track Outcome Coverage %, Faculty Utilization, Participant Satisfaction and Accreditation Compliance.