The Resource Management and Capacity Planning Handbook: A Guide to Maximizing the Value of Your Limited People Resources


Book Description

THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING LIMITED RESOURCES TO INNOVATE AND GROW Trying to accomplish too much with too few resources has become almost customary in business today. More often than not, though, all that we "accomplish" is delayed projects, mass confusion, and missed opportunities--not the achievement of business goals. The Resource Management and Capacity Planning Handbook helps you tackle the critical challenges of resource management and capacity planning head on by providing a proven tool for making the leap from chaos to control: the Capacity Quadrant, a framework for addressing visibility, prioritization, optimization of existing resources, and integrated planning and governance. The Resource Management and Capacity Planning Handbook demystifies the complexities of resource capacity and demand management and offers clear ways for maximizing your limited resources to drive business growth and sustainability. This groundbreaking guide includes: The latest benchmark data from a comprehensive study of resource management Case studies from organizations that have used the book's methods with great success Tools for overcoming common barriers and making decisions involving time capture, resource assignments, and competing priorities Recommendations on ownership of the organization's resource management and capacity planning functions Considerations for addressing the human side of resource management and capacity planning The Resource Management and Capacity Planning Handbook gives you the information, insight, and proven methods to take your company where it has never been before. PRAISE FOR THE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND CAPACITY PLANNING HANDBOOK "There are lots of leadership books, scores of human resources books, and plenty of project and portfolio management books. This is the first book dedicated to what is essentially the drivetrain of organizations--the effective use of its people toward its most important activities. This is Manas's best and most ambitious book yet." -- Judith E. Glaser, CEO, Benchmark Communications, Inc.; Chairman of The Creating WE Institute; and author of the bestselling Conversational Intelligence "Jerry's book and the Capacity Quadrant model he outlines give you a realistic view of your workforce and an approach to maximizing the 'people power' in your organization that's easy to understand and apply. It could very well help transform your company and make you a hero in the process!" -- Dave Garrett, President and CEO, ProjectManagement.com "Unlike lifeless products, people skills and capacity are difficult to measure and vary widely between 'good' days and 'bad' days. Manas steps nimbly through this minefield with solid evidence and practical advice--all laced together in an easy-to-read style." -- R. Max Wideman FCSCE, FEIC, FICE, FPMI "It didn't take me too long into reading when I realized how much we really needed this book. I wish we had it when we started implementing Resource Capacity Planning and Investment Planning. I will make sure all of my staff members have copies." -- Gary Merrifield, PMP, Manager, IT Project Delivery and Quality Assurance, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana "A great guide to the most important topic in management: how to maximize your limited people resources." -- Hans Heuschkel, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst/Project Manager, Swiss insurance company




Operations and Process Management


Book Description

Written by best-selling authors in their field, the fifth edition of Operations and Process Management inspires a critical and applied mastery of the core principles and process which are fundamental to successfully managing business operations. Approaching the subject from a managerial perspective, this innovative text provides clear and concise coverage of the nature, principles, and practice of operations and process management.




Effective Lifecycle Management of Healthcare Applications


Book Description

The rapid growth of software applications within healthcare organizations has made it essential to have defined methodologies and formal processes for the management of the entire Information Technology (IT) portfolio. Utilizing a portfolio management framework throughout an application’s lifecycle will provide the necessary structure to ensure that all new applications are properly evaluated, and, once implemented, remain relevant while continuing to meet organizational requirements. While an organization may have a few large "organization-wide" systems such as the Electronic Health Record (EHR), lab or radiology systems, they also have a large quantity of other clinical, administrative, and research systems. Some larger organizations now have hundreds of software applications to support and manage. The IT staff must be able to implement new requests while still maintaining the current application portfolio. Utilizing a standard repeatable process will help to manage these large portfolios of software applications. This book reviews the management of applications throughout their lifecycle, from initial request through disposition. Best practices dictate that every newly requested application undergoes analysis followed by an approval decision from the organization’s governance committee. The initial implementation project must include activities to prepare for ongoing support while ensuring the application is compliant with all security, privacy, and architecture requirements. An application spends years in operations and maintenance where changes occur regularly through configuration and release management, or additional projects. The cycle continues until disposition. Understanding when to dispose of an application is just as important as deciding when to implement a new one. A defined process for disposing of an application ensures all parts are properly removed or destroyed.




The Art of Capacity Planning


Book Description

Success on the web is measured by usage and growth. Web-based companies live or die by the ability to scale their infrastructure to accommodate increasing demand. This book is a hands-on and practical guide to planning for such growth, with many techniques and considerations to help you plan, deploy, and manage web application infrastructure. The Art of Capacity Planning is written by the manager of data operations for the world-famous photo-sharing site Flickr.com, now owned by Yahoo! John Allspaw combines personal anecdotes from many phases of Flickr's growth with insights from his colleagues in many other industries to give you solid guidelines for measuring your growth, predicting trends, and making cost-effective preparations. Topics include: Evaluating tools for measurement and deployment Capacity analysis and prediction for storage, database, and application servers Designing architectures to easily add and measure capacity Handling sudden spikes Predicting exponential and explosive growth How cloud services such as EC2 can fit into a capacity strategy In this book, Allspaw draws on years of valuable experience, starting from the days when Flickr was relatively small and had to deal with the typical growth pains and cost/performance trade-offs of a typical company with a Web presence. The advice he offers in The Art of Capacity Planning will not only help you prepare for explosive growth, it will save you tons of grief.




A-Z of Capacity Management


Book Description

Most often we are told the "what and why" of capacity management, but not how to make it happen. This book provides good practical approach on how to implement the process, with a view to bringing its benefits to the organization. Capacity management is incomplete without business driven capacity planning.




School, Family, and Community Partnerships


Book Description

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.




Transportation Planning Handbook


Book Description

A multi-disciplinary approach to transportation planning fundamentals The Transportation Planning Handbook is a comprehensive, practice-oriented reference that presents the fundamental concepts of transportation planning alongside proven techniques. This new fourth edition is more strongly focused on serving the needs of all users, the role of safety in the planning process, and transportation planning in the context of societal concerns, including the development of more sustainable transportation solutions. The content structure has been redesigned with a new format that promotes a more functionally driven multimodal approach to planning, design, and implementation, including guidance toward the latest tools and technology. The material has been updated to reflect the latest changes to major transportation resources such as the HCM, MUTCD, HSM, and more, including the most current ADA accessibility regulations. Transportation planning has historically followed the rational planning model of defining objectives, identifying problems, generating and evaluating alternatives, and developing plans. Planners are increasingly expected to adopt a more multi-disciplinary approach, especially in light of the rising importance of sustainability and environmental concerns. This book presents the fundamentals of transportation planning in a multidisciplinary context, giving readers a practical reference for day-to-day answers. Serve the needs of all users Incorporate safety into the planning process Examine the latest transportation planning software packages Get up to date on the latest standards, recommendations, and codes Developed by The Institute of Transportation Engineers, this book is the culmination of over seventy years of transportation planning solutions, fully updated to reflect the needs of a changing society. For a comprehensive guide with practical answers, The Transportation Planning Handbook is an essential reference.




Managing the Gray Areas


Book Description




Agile Workforce Planning


Book Description

Understand how to continuously organize people, skills and resources to meet changing business needs and forecast for future workforce supply and demand.




Armstrong's Essential Human Resource Management Practice


Book Description

Armstrong's Essential Human Resource Management Practice provides a complete overview of the practices and processes fundamental to managing people. The text provides a thorough introduction to the core areas of HR including: people resourcing, performance management, learning and development and rewarding people. It also examines the contribution of HR to organizational aims and objectives and how it is integrated within the business. The book is accompanied by online resources for both lecturers and students and adopts an increased focus on employee engagement, a concept which is becoming increasingly prominent in people management, but which is often presented as a mantra without being properly understood; this is examined in detail with reference to recent research. Michael Armstrong's original Handbook of Human Resource Management is the classic text for all those studying HR or who are entering the profession for the first time. In this new title Michael Armstrong provides a condensed text which has been rewritten with the non-HR student or professional in mind, describing and evaluating key HRM concepts such as: HRM itself; strategic HRM; the resource-based view; the choice between best practice and best fit; human capital measurement; motivation theory; emotional intelligence; the flexible firm; the learning organization; and financial rewards. Online supporting resources for this book include lecture slides, an instructor's manual, case examples and a literature review.