Partnership

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.

This book is the proceedings of a conference sponsored by NATO whereby researchers into Li ion batteries were brought into one place to share ideas. The hope was for a synergistic effect of disparate ideas being commingled in unexpected ways, leading to advances in energy storage density or easier/cheaper manufacturing steps.

It is unclear to what extent they were successful, seen from a vantage point of several years later. Yes, there certainly have been increases in performance of commercially available batteries of this type. Presumably, some of this might have been due to that conference. But the overall impression from this text is that of a mature field. Improvements seem incremental. Which is not a detraction on the researchers themselves, but on the very nature of the field. Diminishing returns despite the sometimes strenous and ingenious approaches in several papers.

Which is a pity. Because one of the great bottlenecks in wireless computing has been the inability of batteries to offer the same performance increases as that of computer memory and disk storage, which follow approximately Moore's Law of doubling in density every two years or so.

I have decided to integrate my interview with Keld (Co-author) and book review together because the book also emphasises the strengths and ideals of Keld's company Market Watch.

From the back jacket of the book "An international study based on over 20,000 negotiations revealed that a huge amount of time is wasted on producing deals that are often of only marginal merit. This book will help you identify the deals which are worth doing and set you on the right track to make them profitable.

Negotiating Partnerships will take you through dozens of areas where additional value can be found, to make win-win partnership deals that really work for you. You will learn how to identify opportunities and conclude better deals at the same time as making the other party feel good."

The book has definitely made good its promises.

My favourite bits:

Good and Bad Negotiators (Chapter 2), Checklist (pg 63) - These are set out in a very clear manner

Added Value and 4-Step Model (Chapter 5) - My last foray with the term Added Value was while lecturing Macroeconomics! Yet again, the authors expertly highlight these concepts in very workable fashion.

The back Appendix 1 and 2 are also good guidepost to accelerate your application of these models.

This book is authoritative and highlight the experience of the authors. It is essential reading for HR, Management and Corporate Strategists.

A very good business book!

Colin Ong TS
Founder/Managing Director

MR=MC Consulting
http://www.mrmc.com.sg
http://www.mrmc.com.sg/12n

We are starting a new partnership and this book contained everthing we needed to prepare partnership agreement and pointers to other legal forms required. Would have had to pay an attorney to prepare agreement without this book. We only payed for a review. Saved us big bucks!

It is an interesting book on partnerships in Supply Chain Management. The authors elegantly described one of the softer issues, in the world that is running for a quick fix solutions, in Supply chain management. Authors clearly explain different models available for the managers facing the problems of Supply Chain Management. Quite useful !

A wonderfully revealing history of the chicanery and deceit used in transferring much of European art into today's U.S. museums. Simpson is detailed and thorough in researching the history of the House of Duveen and connecting well known Art Historian Bernard Berenson to the early 20th century's version of today's internet speculation game

This is a complete survey of state and federal cooperative technology programs as of the Fall of 1994. It is well organized, which makes looking up or comparing individual state or federal programs easy. For example, for each federal and state program, the book provides background, structure, program descriptions, funding sources and contact information. This was an ambitious project, and was well executed.

It suffers only in that the data is now more than five years old, and, although the introduction mentions that the book was to be subsequently updated every two years, I have not been able to find a more recent version. However, it still serves as a good starting point for research into these types of programs, and the most recent statistics on funding, etc. can always be obtained from the programs themselves.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys optical illusions. It is a great collection of them.

"Public Lives, Private Passions" answers questions such as Do relationships with people in the public eye differ from any other? Does the pressure of constant public attention influence the relationship? Susan Mitchell answers these questions by interviewing nine women whose partners have been influential in a variety of fields. They are Gabi Hollows, Eileen Bond, Jerry Rogers, Ann Hollingworth, Betty Churcher, Cherryl Barassi, Rosemary Tipiloura, Helen Gibson and Patrice Newell. These Australian women reveal their struggles with success and failure, confidence and doubt, and how they have learned to celebrate their sense of self.

This is the sixth volume of a seven-volume series titled "Ethnographer's Toolkit." It explains ethnographic research, the role of the researcher, the ethical considerations, and how to develop research partnerships. The authors use numerous case studies drawn both from their own experience and the experiences of colleagues to illustrate the points made. Key propositions are written in boldface and have a symbol in the margin. Definitions and cross-references to the other six books in the Toolkit series are also listed in the margin for easy reference. The book is designed for community organizers and service professionals, educators, professors and students in the social sciences and health services, for specialists in communications, and for students working in applied field settings (viii). But it is also helpful for development workers and missionaries, or any group that needs to survey community values, structures and needs.

This is not a theoretical textbook, but a practical guidebook about a researcher's life in the field. It is divided into two chapters. The first chapter covers the different "roles that researchers adopt or acquire in the course of research activities; strategies for entry and survival in the field site; how the personal, professional, and philosophical characteristics of the researcher affect his or her access to information; and the ethical considerations for which ethnographers are accountable in the field. The second chapter covers the roles, strategies, and responsibilities of researchers who are working in, or organizing, research partnerships" (x).

The authors explain each step in the process of ethnographic research, and the kinds of problems that might occur at that step, using many case studies of how that problem occurred and was handled. The checklists of behavioral dos and don'ts are universally applicable. I recommend this book, and the whole series, to anyone doing field research.

Reviewed by Michael J. Squires
SIL International