Books That Influenced My Thinking: Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position by Thomas Redman.
From the post:
I recently learned that Technics Publications, led by Steve Hoberman, is re-issuing one of my favorites, Data and Reality by William Kent. It led me to conclude I ought to review some of the books that most influenced my thinking about data quality. (I’ll include Data and Reality, when the re-issue appears). I am explicitly excluding books on data quality per se.
First up is Dr. Deming’s Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position (QPC). First published in 1982, to me this is Deming at his finest. The more famous Out of The Crisis came out about the same time and the two cover much the same material. But QPC is raw, powerful Deming. He is fed up the economic malaise of corporate America at the time and he rails against top management for simply not understanding the role of quality in marketplace competition.
Data quality is a “hot” topic these days. I thought it might be useful to see what business perspective resources were available on the topic.
Both to learn management “speak” about data quality and how solutions are evaluated.
QPC sounds a bit dated (1982) but I rather doubt management has changed that much, albeit the terms by which management is described have probably changed a lot. Not the terms used by their employees but the terms used by consultants who are being paid by management. 😉
Not to forget that topic maps as information products, information services or software, all face the same issues of quality, productivity and competitive position.