Professional Resources Books

After reading the author's "The Power of IT: Maximizing Your Technology Investments" I was sufficiently impressed with his work to track down other books that he had written.

This book starts with a 360 degree view of IS by giving the following viewpoints and perceptions: users, bottom line, and from within IS itself. Although this book was written in 1994 it is as valid today as when Mr. Braithwaite wrote chapter 1. The next chapter is a discussion of TQM, and its main value is to synchronize the author's definitions with our own. A few topics here were real gems, including managing by prevention, identifying and measuring the cost of quality, and measuring the performance of business processes which IS is chartered to support. The best part of this chapter the structure and approach for institutionalizing management of change. Mr. Braithwaite proposes four different groups: (1) management, (2) measurement, (3) education and (4) employee involvement committees. This approach does ensure that all major stakeholders are involved, and it also will prevent IT/IS from operating in a vacuum.

Chapter 3 is devoted to TQM within IS, but the focus moves to systems development. I was hoping for a more holistic treatment of IS that also covered service delivery and support, and production. These areas are covered, but only within the context of systems development. The next three chapters are devoted to incorporating TQM into the systems development process. Chapter 4 is devoted to establishing TQM, chapter 5 covers TQM initiatives in the requirements definition phase, and chapter 6 addresses TQM in the build and delivery phases. Chapter 6 has some excellent information on metrics, testing and release to production.

I especially liked chapter 7, which focuses on creating a quality culture within IS. Some of the factors and indicators that Mr. Braithwaite provides in this chapter are worth reading carefully, including staff turnover and the effect on cost of quality, and the TQM implementation model for IS. I also liked the way the author aligns seven of Deming's principles to IS department management. This is another area that is worth reading.

Chapter 8 wraps up this 141 page book with a discussion of future directions for IS within the context of TQM. Some of the key points here include: change perceptions [of users and the business] through performance, add value to the enterprise, and formulate a long-term vision. These points should be mandates for any IS department regardless of whether they elect to implement TQM or not.

Overall this is a valuable book if your organization does heavy development. If your development is limited to light maintenance programming or adding features to an enterprise resource planning application, much of this book will not apply. If you are in the first group or you want to learn about how TQM can be applied to development, you will find this to be a 4-star book that is worth tracking down.

Most mathematics instructors who are appointed chair of their department are "promoted" from within. Therefore, they are immediately transformed from one of the group into the most visible and directly accessible boss of the math faculty. Before they took over the responsibility, they were insulated from dealing with the administrative upper echelons and could form opinions, cultivate select friends in the department and take sides on departmental issues. After they assume the leadership role, they now have to deal directly with organizational administrators and they run the risk of hearing a cry of "favoritism" if they carry out their previous social intercourse. Most members of a department want the chair to act as the first among equals, except when it is a cause that is near to their heart. In that case, they have no problem with the chair showing a bit of a dictatorial streak.
Such a transition to the chair is a hard one, made all the more difficult because you are essentially on your own. Support among your former peers is fleeting, depending on how they view your decisions. In many cases, you are expected to continue to do almost everything you did before, along with your new duties. Up until now, there been no guidebook regarding what to expect and how to juggle the many responsibilities. This book is a manual for what to expect in the new role as chair as well as some advice in how to deal with the problems. All institutions have their differences, so the contributors try to be as general as possible in their scenarios.
Situations such as managing difficult faculty protected under the tenure umbrella, handling decisions to grant or refuse tenure, dealing with irate students, budget restrictions, student recruitment, a myriad of legal issues and generally just keeping your sanity are all covered. There is no sugar coating here, the contributors are up front and honest about how difficult and unrewarding the job can be. There are also short articles written by administrators such as the president, dean and provost, giving their perspective on the role of the department chair.
I strongly recommend that anyone who is potentially in line to become department chair read this book. It may be your only hope.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission.

A useful book for learning how to deal with workplace conflict, based on the premise that one should focus on the people involved in the conflict, rather than the tasks themselves. The book encourages the reader/supervisor to accept conflict as inevitable, and that rather than apportioning blame and imposing solutions/quoting workplace rules, one should bring the parties together and ascertain the _facts_ before seeking agreement between the parties (in the case of mediation).
Explores the main methods of conflict resolution and their respective pros and cons (e.g. mediation/negotiation/arbitration).
The final chapter contains a number of exercises for the reader to practise. Probably directed at Team Leaders/Supervisors, but equally helpful for employees who simply want a better understanding of workplace conflict and possible solutions.

Well this is a must have , book by all the liberies , because

the usefulnes of its contents, I've read older editions and

found them very interesting for the development of communities

A good, basic guide to using Pubmed to improve the yield of your searches. Takes you through the functions of Pubmed as well as the search terms and how to tailor them to specific types of clinical questions.

This book was recommended for a corse I'm taking for Event Management and has proved to be helpful in understanding the fine details to pulling off an effective meeting and such.

This book is an unusually focused book. I found it most useful and will use it as reference in my work. I recommend it for ministers approaching retirement.

In this case the delivery really took very long and it was not possible to track my order the whole time either. But besides that everything just went fine.

Good source for help in working with older properties, although a bit too flip. Generally European sources are more informed than USA but this gives good references and sources which is what most private individuals need. It is less usefull for professionals such as architects & designers. Even here because architectural and design education in the states is more geared towards large scale developement and not so much to restoration / renovation this reference is usefull. Good for usa names and sources, but suggest that european references etc. are better in terms of specific details and construction.

This is a good book for those who want to understand technology contracting and management. It is the best resource I have found in this area.