CMMI Training - Day One

Just back from day one in the CMMI class. There's quite a few participants - around 25. Dr. Shelton is in my "group". I've heard a lot about him. He's a blind mathematician programmer - that right there should stop you in your tracks. During lunch we ended up alone in the room and got to talk for a good twenty minutes. I may get this story a bit wrong, but wanted to write it for my own keepsake. He told me about his dissertation in combinatorics. To complete his dissertation, he had to do some sorta artificial intelligence for proofing. That was in 1979. Computer time was limited and he had a hard time scheduling. This put a damper on finishing his doctorate. Finally, he got the computer time and was able to stick in his punch cards... and ultimately confirm his doctoral thesis. Years later somebody challenged his thesis. The cards were by then chewed up by squirrels. He then reproduced the entire work over Thanksgiving week and got a slew of Sun machines to re-verify his thesis. The one who challenged withdrew the challenge and ended up working with Dr. Shelton on some other stuff. The point of this story is - had Dr. Shelton known about CMMI, he would have put his cards in a squirrel-proof box. No, that really isn't the point, but I got a good laugh from Dr. Shelton. I think that is what I liked about day one.... well... here is some more...

The teacher threw this one out, "Did Picasso have a process?" The answer was of course, yes, afterall we are in a process centric universe --- CMMI. Of course, I just couldn't accept that.

The teacher broke us up into groups of 5. Each group was instructed to name itself. We gathered around and somebody said, "What should we call ourselves?" Dr. Shelton said, "Spark some debate." or something like that... so I said, "Sparks". It was unanimous, we were "The Sparks".

Later on, Dr. Shelton asked how the processes we were discussing would apply to research. I jumped on that, and asked what process was it that team Spark used to come up with its name. Dr. Shelton said, "It was random!" I said something about innovation and said that I didn't believe Picasso had a process. He lived in that moment where we came up with the name "Sparks" --- that blankness waiting on an idea. I think that was much of Picasso's point.

Ack... I've typed too much...