Thinking About CMM

Some things learned in the academia can have practical significance. One thing I learned in a dry, theory-laden unit was the concept of Capability Maturity Model (CMM). It is summed in the following diagram.

[caption id="attachment_804" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Capability Maturity Model"][/caption]

The CMM can help locate where an organization or a unit within an organization is in relation to a particular process or functional capability.

In a sense, CMM does for organizations what Maslow's hierarchy of needs does for human beings. The latter claims that lofty human needs cannot be fulfilled before satisfying baser needs.

By helping organizations assess their capabilities or lack thereof, CMM can point out where an organisation or a team needs to pour its resources before planning grand but doomed schemes.

Thus Spake HAL

Dissociated press is a computer program that generates text based on another text. Here is an example of dissociated press based on the US presidential inaugural addresses:

Fellow - Citizens of the world. Abroad and at the same mistake. In a great river system, purified and made self. And there is a privilege which he has shown that our Government together and laugh together and save the lives of our civilization secure. In our time, a pleasing guaranty that the actual equality of rewards or possessions so long bled and suffered, we have fought not for themselves. Mindful of these States, was out of the Ohio or of rank have been distinguished by some from a fever of words

A computer would have apparently written The Book of Genesis thus:

In the day when they were both the daughters of Lot with him, at the first born; I bare the loss of it; for a possession of flocks, and she called his name Onan. And Hamor communed with him for righteousness. And her brother and her damsels, and possession of herds, and at night he shall be fruitful and multiply thee, then the other end thereof. And Terah took Abram his son with the sword? Wherefore didst thou flee away secretly, and where thou art yet alive,

I was curious how Gandhi would come out. The following text is based on a collection of Gandhi's writings at Project Gutenberg. I did not remove the Project Gutenberg copyright notice before feeding it to the computer, and the effects are pleasing:

Project Gutenberg is a grand doctrine of life. With them it is to weld India into one, he instanced Scotland's poverty of the Government whenever it needed their help. Their resistance consisted of disobedience of the copyright holder, your use and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of them fellow cranks--if in similar circumstances I acted towards them differently from my own family. It were better to concentrate my effort upon the subject before us. I was hard put to it that the co-operative movement. " In his opinion