The Physician Managers Handbook or Quality Software Management

The Physician Manager's Handbook: Essential Business Skills for Succeeding in Health Care

Author: Robert J J Solomon

Physicians are increasingly taking on new roles as executives and managers in today's health care delivery system. This work provides an overview of the essential business management skills that physician managers need to succeed.

Booknews

Covers major business skills physician managers need to acquire and provides physician managers with an understanding of how the science of business administration can be applied to their roles in health care organizations. Contains chapters on aspects such as evaluating performance, employment methods, compensating employees, cash control, collection, marketing, organizational integration, TQM, negotiation, and managing information technology. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Interesting book:

Quality Software Management: First-Order Measurement, Vol. 2

Author: Gerald M Weinberg

This second stand-alone volume of the series offers you a step-by-step plan for gathering reliable information through careful observation and measurement.

Specific techniques are explained in detail, with a model that divides the complex measurement process into four steps:

• Intake
• Meaning
• Significance
• Response

Each step illustrates how to more precisely observe and measure the software development process.

Weinberg targets the key factors to measure, so as to produce consistent quality software.

Booknews

Designed as a stand-alone text, this second volume in a three-volume series (the first volume, Systems Thinking, was reviewed in the March 1992 SciTech Book News) illustrates how to more precisely observe and measure the software development process, and offers a four-step model to break the complex process into a series of smaller, simpler steps. It also describes the minimum set of activities for any organization to start a measurement program, as well as the key factors to measure that will help organizations consistently produce the quality software they want. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments ..... x
Preface ..... xi
Introduction: A Model of Observation ..... 1

I Intake ..... 5
1 Why Observation is Important ..... 7

1.1 Management Failure: Crisis or Illusion? ..... 7
1.2 Seeing the Culture ..... 8
1.3 Cultural Observation Patterns in Action ..... 11
1.4 Comparing the Effects of Observation Patterns ..... 18
1.5 Helpful Hints and Variations ..... 20
1.6 Summary ..... 21
1.7 Practice ..... 22

2 Selecting What to Observe ..... 25

2.1 Intake Step ..... 26
2.2 Choosing What to Observe: Parable of the Ones ..... 29
2.3 Requirements for an Effective Observation Model ..... 30
2.4 Management Illusions and Creeping Deterioration ..... 34
2.5 Helpful Hints and Variations ..... 35
2.6 Summary ..... 37
2.7 Practice ..... 38

3 Visualizing the Product ..... 40

3.1 Using Sensory Modalities ..... 41
3.2 Making Software Visible ..... 42
3.3 Making Software Available for Observation ..... 47
3.4 Product Openness as Key to a Steering Culture ..... 50
3.5 Helpful Hints and Variations ..... 51
3.6 Summary ..... 52
3.7 Practice ..... 53

4 Visualizing the Process ..... 55

4.1 Process Openness as Key to an Anticipating Culture ..... 56
4.2 Identifying the Anticipating Organization ..... 58
4.3 A Process Picture Vocabulary ..... 59
4.4 Project Control Panel ..... 67
4.5 Helpful Hints and Variations ..... 68
4.6 Summary .... 69
4.7 Practice ..... 69

II Meaning ..... 71

5 A Case Study of Interpretation ..... 73

5.1 Slip Charts: Comparing Promise and Delivery ..... 74
5.2 Interpretation of Company A's Charts ...... 76
5.3 Interpretation of Company B's Charts ..... 78
5.4 Company C's Culture ..... 84
5.5 Helpful Hints and Variations ..... 86
5.6 Summary ..... 86
5.7 Practice ..... 87

6 Pitfalls When Making Meaning from Observations ..... 89

6.1 Rule of Three Interpretations ..... 90
6.2 Applying the Data Question ..... 91
6.3 Interpreting Observations ..... 93
6.4 Spending Too Much Too Soon on Measurements ..... 93
6.5 Pitfalls ..... 98
6.6 Helpful Hints and Variations ..... 101
6.7 Summary ..... 102
6.8 Practice ..... 103

7 Direct Observation of Quality ..... 105

7.1 Quality Versus Apple Pie ..... 106
7.2 The Relativity of Quality ..... 108
7.3 An Industry Out of Control of Quality ..... 111
7.4 Whose Ideas and Feelings Count? ..... 112
7.5 Helpful Hints and Variations ..... 115
7.6 Summary ..... 116
7.7 Practice ..... 117

8 Measuring Cost and Value ..... 118

8.1 Confusing Cost and Value ..... 119
8.2 What is Value? ..... 119
8.3 Role of Requirements in Observing Quality ..... 122
8.4 Details Impact Case Method ..... 124
8.5 Single Greatest Benefit Method .....127
8.6 Helpful Hints and Variations ..... 131
8.7 Summary ..... 132
8.8 Practice ..... 133

III Significance ..... 135

9 Measuring Emotional Significance ..... 137

9.1 A Model of Extracting Significance ..... 138
9.2 Observing Incongruence ..... 140
9.3 Subjective Impact Method ..... 145
9.4 Feelings are Facts ..... 150
9.5 Helpful Hints and Variations ..... 151
9.6 Summary ..... 152
9.7 Practice ..... 153

10 Measuring Failures Before They Happen ..... 154

10.1 Assessing the Cost of Failures ..... 155
10.2 Universal Pattern of Huge Losses ..... 157
10.3 Understanding the Significance of Failure Sources .....1 60
10.4 Helpful Hints and Variations .....165
10.5 Summary ..... 166
10.6 Practice ..... 167

11 Precision Listening ..... 169

11.1 Listening for Distortions ..... 170
11.2 Listening for Improper G