Benchmarking is a powerful tool for improvement. It is one of the fastest-growing techniques for quality and performance improvement and attracts massive attention. Now, more than ever, there is a clear need for straightforward guidelines to help companies make the most of benchmarking. This book addresses that need.

With growing demands for increased operational efficiency and process improvement in organizations of all sizes, more and more companies are turning to benchmarking as a means of setting goals and measuring performance against the products, services and practices of other organizations that are recognized as leaders. The Benchmarking Book is an indispensable guide to process improvement through benchmarking, providing managers, practitioners and consultants with all the information needed to carry out effective benchmarking studies. Covering everything from essential theory to important considerations such as project management and legal issues, The Benchmarking Book is the ideal step-by-step guide to assessing and improving your company’s processes and performance through benchmarking.

Planning, measuring, and paying attention to details form the basis for all successful engineering operations. Measurements pervade everything we do and must be viewed from a systems perspective. A comprehensive all-encompassing guide to measurements, Handbook of Measurements: Benchmarks for Systems Accuracy and Precision focuses on high-level engineering computations essential for benchmarks and technical innovation. The book uses a systems framework and a technically rigorous approach to systems linking of measurements—an approach that sets it apart from other handbooks. The popular saying "measure twice and cut once" bears out the importance of measurements in human endeavors. This handbook covers both qualitative and quantitative topics of measurement. It opens with a chapter on the fundamentals of measurement and includes coverage of human-centric measurements, such as measurement of personnel productivity and contractor performance. It concludes with three appendices on measurement, references, conversion factors, equations, formulas, and statistics for measurement. It is well understood that humans cannot manage anything that cannot be measured. All elements involved in our day-to-day decision making involve some form of measurement, whether in the kitchen, retail, sports, service operations, geographical exploration, health care delivery, worker productivity, clothing design, engineering product design, or space craft launching. Measuring an attribute of a system and then analyzing it against some standard, some specification, some best practice, or some benchmark empower a decision maker to take appropriate and timely actions. This book gives you a guide for sustainable practices to ensure accurate measurements, helping you make decisions backed by metrics.

This book serves as both a textbook and handbook on the benchmarking of systems and components used as building blocks of modern information and communication technology applications. It provides theoretical and practical foundations as well as an in-depth exploration of modern benchmarks and benchmark development. The book is divided into two parts: foundations and applications. The first part introduces the foundations of benchmarking as a discipline, covering the three fundamental elements of each benchmarking approach: metrics, workloads, and measurement methodology. The second part focuses on different application areas, presenting contributions in specific fields of benchmark development. These contributions address the unique challenges that arise in the conception and development of benchmarks for specific systems or subsystems, and demonstrate how the foundations and concepts in the first part of the book are being used in existing benchmarks. Further, the book presents a number of concrete applications and case studies based on input from leading benchmark developers from consortia such as the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) and the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). Providing both practical and theoretical foundations, as well as a detailed discussion of modern benchmarks and their development, the book is intended as a handbook for professionals and researchers working in areas related to benchmarking. It offers an up-to-date point of reference for existing work as well as latest results, research challenges, and future research directions. It also can be used as a textbook for graduate and postgraduate students studying any of the many subjects related to benchmarking. While readers are assumed to be familiar with the principles and practices of computer science, as well as software and systems engineering, no specific expertise in any subfield of these disciplines is required.

The no-cost way to improve your organization on a daily basis Most nonprofits are already benchmarking informally. This unique book defines a formal way to benchmark. You'll learn how to prepare your organization, measure performance, and implement best practices as well as learning the five key steps of benchmarking, the arguments against benchmarking--and why you should disregard them, how benchmarking differs from evaluation and assessment, how to form a benchmarking team, how to create a "success equation" that helps you measure your organization's performance, how to make sure to measure what matters, how to choose your benchmarking partners--and what you can learn from the "wrong" partner, and how to overcome staff resistance to benchmarking. Practical tools help you benchmark what matters Real-world examples illustrate benchmarking in action. Exercises and worksheets guide you through processes such as drafting a benchmarking plan; identifying and analyzing the things in your organization that need improvement; prioritizing which processes to focus on; identifying your CTQ (critical to quality) outcomes; and more. The way to survive as a nonprofit in today's market is to thrive. With so many organizations seeking the same dollars, only the best will endure. Benchmarking ensures that your organization is always operating at peak performance. It's something you can't afford not to do--especially since you can do it for free!

A practical guide that offers the reader a comprehensive view of benchmarking for modern transaction processing and database systems. Much of the information is available for the first time. The handbook provides the tools to evaluate different systems, different software products on a single machine, and different machines within a single product family.

In Personal Benchmark: Integrating Behavioral Finance and Investment Management, Chuck Widger and Dr. Daniel Crosby outline the ways in which a program of embedded behavioral finance, fueled by what matters most to you, can be your protection against irrational financial behavior. Along the way, you'll learn how to improve your investment experience, increase returns formerly sacrificed to misbehavior, and worry less about "The Economy" as you become increasingly focused on "My Economy." Welcome to a new way of investing, a new paradigm for conceptualizing wealth, and a system of turning emotion from your portfolio's worst enemy into its best friend! In this new model, risk is simply the likelihood that we will underperform our dreams. Irrationality is acting in ways that thwart our ability to reach those dreams. And the optimal portfolio is not the one that generates the highest return in abstraction, it is the one that helps us meet our goals without killing our nerves before we get there. This book gives advisors the tools needed to effectively communicate the design and execution of the Personal Benchmark solution.

La 4e de couv. indique : "Business benchmark second edition is the official Cambridge English preparation course for BULATS. A pacy, topic-based course with comprehensive coverage of language and skills for business, it motivates and engages both professionals and students preparing for working life."

Use this in-depth guide to correctly design benchmarks, measure key performance metrics of .NET applications, and analyze results. This book presents dozens of case studies to help you understand complicated benchmarking topics. You will avoid common pitfalls, control the accuracy of your measurements, and improve performance of your software. Author Andrey Akinshin has maintained BenchmarkDotNet (the most popular .NET library for benchmarking) for five years and covers common mistakes that developers usually make in their benchmarks. This book includes not only .NET-specific content but also essential knowledge about performance measurements which can be applied to any language or platform (common benchmarking methodology, statistics, and low-level features of modern hardware). What You'll LearnBe aware of the best practices for writing benchmarks and performance testsAvoid the common benchmarking pitfalls Know the hardware and software factors that affect application performanceAnalyze performance measurements Who This Book Is For .NET developers concerned with the performance of their applications

For ten years and in two classic books, Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell have described how to analyze the characteristics of texts and select just-right books to use for guided reading instruction. Now, for the first time, all of their thinking and research has been updated and brought together into Leveled Books, K-8 to form the ultimate guide to choosing and using books from kindergarten through middle school. Fountas and Pinnell take you through every aspect of leveled books, describing how to select and use them for different purposes in your literacy program and offering prototype descriptions of fiction and nonfiction books at each level. They share advice on: the role of leveled books in reading instruction, analyzing the characteristics of fiction and nonfiction texts, using benchmark books to assess instructional levels for guided reading, selecting books for both guided and independent reading, organizing high-quality classroom libraries, acquiring books and writing proposals to fund classroom-library purchases, creating a school book room. In addition, Fountas and Pinnell explain the leveling process in detail so that you can tentatively level any appropriate book that you want to use in your instruction. Best of all, Leveled Books, K-8 is one half of a new duo of resources that will change how you look at leveled books. Its companion-www.FountasandPinnellLeveledBooks.com-is a searchable and frequently updated website that includes more than 18,000 titles. With Leveled Books, K-8 you'll know how and why to choose books for your readers, and with www.FountasandPinnellLeveledBooks.com, you'll have the ideal tool at your fingertips for finding appropriate books for guided reading. Book jacket.