While their husbands progressed through their own formation program, these women helped one another accept and live their newly acquired role in the Church as deacons' wives.

"In this book, I have found answers to key questions and misconceptions about the relationship between Six Sigma and the Capability Maturity Model Integration [CMMI]....Among my key takeaways is that the relationship between Six Sigma and CMMI exemplifies one of the principles of S4/IEE: CMMI provides process infrastructure that is needed to support a successful Six Sigma strategy." —Forrest W. Breyfogle III, CEO, Smarter Solutions, Inc. "Finally, a book that bridges the software and hardware process tool set. To date, there have been hardware and software engineers who for one reason or another have not communicated their process methods. And so, myths formed that convinced the hardware community that CMMI was only for software and likewise convinced the software community that Six Sigma was only for hardware. It is both refreshing and thought provoking to dispel these myths." —Jack Ferguson, Manager, SEI Appraisal Program, Software Engineering Institute CMMI and Six Sigma represent two of the best-known process improvement initiatives. Both are designed to enhance work quality and thereby produce business advantages for an organization. It's a misconception that the two are in competition and cannot be implemented simultaneously. Practitioners originally trained in either CMMI or Six Sigma are now finding that the two initiatives work remarkably well together in the pursuit of their common goal. CMMI® and Six Sigma: Partners in Process Improvement focuses on the synergistic, rather than competitive, implementation of CMMI and Six Sigma—with synergy translating to "faster, better, cheaper" achievement of mission success. Topics range from formation of the value proposition to specific implementation tactics. The authors illustrate how not taking advantage of what both initiatives have to offer puts an organization at risk of sinking time, energy, and money into "inventing" a solution that already exists. Along the way they debunk a few myths about Six Sigma applications in software. While the authors concentrate on the interoperability of Six Sigma and CMMI, they also recognize that organizations rarely implement only these two initiatives. Accordingly, the discussion turns to the emerging realm of "multimodel" process improvement and strategies and tactics that transcend models to help organizations effectively knit together a single unified internal process standard. Whether you work in the defense industry, for a commercial organization, or for a government agency—wherever quality and efficiency matter—you'll find this book to be a valuable resource for bridging process issues across domains and building an improvement strategy that succeeds.

This book presents fundamental concepts and technologies to tackle interoperability between information systems. It details interoperability at the data, service, and process level, and combines theoretical foundations with hands-on presentation of technologies to enable the development of sound and practical integration. Chapter 1 details general interoperability challenges and describes the structure of the book. To start with, Chapter 2 presents technologies for the exchange of data between two selected and highly relevant data formats, i.e., relational databases and XML. Next, Chapter 3 explains concepts for schema matching and mapping and data integration as well as the technological basis for implementing them based on query and transformation languages like XPath and XSLT. Chapter 4 then turns to service interoperability and explains two related technologies -- REST and GraphQL -- in detail. In Chapter 5, fundamentals for designing process orchestrations at the conceptual level are presented, focusing on how to model process orchestrations and how to verify their correctness and soundness, and showing BPMN as the de facto modeling standard. Chapter 6 then details the concepts and languages for the implementation of process orchestrations, including the presentation of execution languages for process orchestrations that are equipped with a formal semantics, e.g., Workflow Nets, the Refined Process Structure Tree, and CPEE Trees. Subsequently, Chapter 7 focuses on the growing number of distributed, loosely coupled, and often non-interoperable applications through the concepts of enterprise application integration and explains these by an implementation in CPN Tools and by two case studies. Eventually, Chapter 8 is lifting the orchestration and integration concepts and technologies to the choreography level by dealing with the interoperability between different process orchestrations. Chapter 9 concludes the book by featuring success factors for interoperability projects. It also provides a range of open research directions for interoperability such as compliance, sensor fusion, and blockchain technologies. The book is mainly intended as a textbook to be used for developing and teaching courses on interoperability and integration. To this end, it is accompanied by a Web site with additional teaching materials. It also spans a bridge from researchers to graduate students and practitioners by providing a deep understanding on practical interoperability challenges and solutions. The focus here is put on de facto standards and open-source systems and tools to enable interoperability solutions at low cost.

This book examines the processes and relationships that underpin the delivery of new homes across the United Kingdom, focussing primarily on the land use planning system in England, the way that housing providers engage with that system, and how the processes of engagement are changing or might change in the future. Planning, market and social house building - the three key processes - are first dissected and explored individually, then brought together to study the key areas of interaction between planning and the providers of social and market housing by way of the range of tensions that have consistently dogged those interactions. Extensive illustrative case study material provides a platform to the consideration of developing more integrated, realistic and proactive approaches to planning. Proposing evolutionary, and sometimes radical proposals for change, Delivering New Homes makes a bold contribution to finding a better way of delivering the new homes that the nation increasingly needs.

This book is an engaging and accessible collection that celebrates the nuance and depth of student-faculty partnerships in higher education. It aims to break the mold of traditional and power-laden academic writing by showcasing creative genres such as reflection, poetry, dialogue, interview, vignette, and essay. The collection has invited chapters from renowned scholars in the field alongside new student and staff voices, and it reflects and embodies a wide range of student-staff partnership perspectives from different roles, identities, cultures, countries, and institutions.