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It has some of the neatest quotes, Funniest quotes, and your favorite quotes. It may be short but it is worth long time and effort. So this is the book for you Lucy fans !!!!!!!!
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There are two general areas in which risk can be categorized. Some of the risks are known, either precisely or within a range of parameters. For example, the cost per day for each category of worker involved in the project is well-known. This type of risk is not difficult to manage, and most managers have a great deal of experience handling them, so very little of the book deals with them.
The second category are those risks that are largely unknown. These are items like the risk of mission critical software suffering a catastrophic failure to large, unexpected cost overruns. It is this category that is examined in detail in this book. Of course, the boundaries between these categories are extremely subjective and situation dependent. A small company with limited financial resources would consider a smaller cost overrun to be critical than a company more capable of taking a large financial risk.
After the initial explanation that risk management is necessary, the next step is trying to quantify the risks. This involves charts of likelihood of delivery time that resemble normal distribution curves. Using such charts allows any prediction to include some natural 'wiggle room', which eliminates one of the most recurring and frustrating problems. Development managers are commonly asked to give a date for product delivery, and that date becomes fixed in stone. Upper echelons are notorious for hearing only the 'we can deliver on August first' part of the message and ignoring the remaining, 'provided all the planets are in alignment, there is no snow in January and no one takes a day off' part of the message. Expressing the date in a diagram of this form means that it is impossible to see the date without also seeing the estimated range.
The authors have also developed a risk assessment tool called RISKOLOGY, which can be freely downloaded from the companion web site. While the tool is not described in complete detail, there is enough background for you to be able to use it quickly. Chapter 13 deals with the core risks of software projects. The five risks listed are:
* Schedule flaw.
* Requirements inflation.
* Personnel turnover.
* Specification breakdown.
* Under-performance.
None of these risks is any surprise to experienced managers, although including them was necessary and the authors do a good job in explaining them.
Chapter 14 puts forward a process for discovering risks, which is excellent and in the realm of 'how to learn what it is that you don't know.' It is this approach that will separate those who succeed from those who must resort to faking success. The greatest and most dangerous risks are those never considered as possible events. Catastrophe brainstorming followed by scenario analysis is the strategy that the authors put forward.
As a mathematician, I was pleased to see that the concept of probability is used to perform the risk analysis. Probability charts are used throughout the book to demonstrate the concepts and of course this more accurately describes our knowledge of the future. Nothing in life is certain, so the probability limits need to be placed around every event.
The software project without risk is so dull and uninteresting that no one with any talent would go near it. So, if you have talent, gear up by buying this book and plunge forward to take on the enormous challenges of making software that matters to the world.
What they have to say is always important. "Walzing with Bears" is no exception, and even if you should disagree with parts of the book, their arguments will force you to think about critical aspects of management that you may not have previously considered.
Reading the first few chapters, my only criticism was that they seemed to be oversimplifying some issues. Reading on, I realized that it was a deliberate and brilliant part of their teaching technique. In later chapters, the book carefully added the complexities that covered more and more of my early reservations in ways that made them easily understandable.
It's a terrific book.
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Donna Ashworth-Dallas, Texas
Attending a state-run high school for the blind, the talented youngster gained independence but was subjected to the unchecked discipline of certain thuggish teachers. In college he considered a career as an attorney, but wisely determined music was more his speed.
In addition to the typical biographical data, Ronnie expounds on numerous subjects. Politically speaking, he expresses outrage over the Supreme Court decision (recent when this work was first published) legalizing flag burning. The conservative patriotic principles he advocates are a welcome change from the usual show biz liberal diatribes. That's just one of many stereotypes Ronnie Milsap's life has shattered.
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His unique, but successful, techniques at time agree with, and at times flies in the face of, McGregor, classical management theorists, and others who have studied management, communications and human resources.
In chapters entitled, "A Higher Cause", "Trust Your Instincts", "Destroy the Hierarchy", "A Simple Stake in the Business", "The Virtues of Smallness", "Ethic Over Politics", and others Mr. Iverson relates how you too, if you are willing to work hard enough at it, can "turn a confused, tired old company on the brink of bankruptcy into a star player...", while learning that "many of the so-called 'necessary evils' of life in corporate America are, in fact, not necessary".
The higher up the manager (there are four layers including CEO), the higher the proportion of of paycut during down times.
Has simple effective metrics to monitor the health of each decentralized unit (half a dozen including sales, productivity, expenses).
A good mechanism to set goal and measure performance for a business generating tangible goods. Not sure how this could be applied to more intangible value added activities such as IT and software engineering
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years, but none have given me insight on what shots I need to
concentrate on most.
This book outlines the twelve most important shots and
describes in detail, how to go about accomplishing them.
This book is making me a better golfer in record time!
I highly recommend it!
All in all, probably one of the best books I have read on shot making and shot shaping.
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The aircraft are presented alphabetically. The general specs and history of each aircraft is given. Finally, a useful list of operators of the aircraft is provided.
Singfield selected his photos with great care to emphasize the unique and distinctive identifying features of the aircraft. Among the curious aircraft variants photographed: a Basler turboprop DC-3, a DC-7 water bomber, and a "hushed" UPS 727-100.
The book is very well constructed, with a solid stiff binding.