Development and Evaluation of an Intuitive Operations Planning Process

Abstract

This work represents the fourth phase of a project investigating the Canadian Forces (CF) Operational Planning Process (OPP) and an alternative planning process based on intuitive decision making. This is in support of a larger project, Project Minerva, focused on reexamining Command and Control (C2), specifically the CF OPP, in the Land Force in light of the implementation of digitized C2 systems. The CF OPP represents an analytic decision making process in which 1) multiple solutions to the problem must be evaluated and the best selected, and 2) evaluation of solution alternatives must be performed through exhaustive factor-by-factor comparison. Research in the cognitive sciences has suggested that a large portion of human decision making is conducted intuitively; i.e. by less formal, non-analytic processes. Thus, there may be a mismatch between the OPP as laid out in doctrine and taught at training and education institutions within the CF, and the planning process as practiced by command teams in more operational settings, especially at the Brigade level and below. Specifically, the current work includes the development of an alternative planning process based on intuitive decision making (referred to as the Intuitive Operations Planning Process or IOPP), the development of a training course for the IOPP, and an evaluation of the effectiveness of the IOPP compared to the existing CF OPP. The IOPP exhibits the best characteristics of other intuitive planning models (Kievenaar, 1997; Schmitt & Klein, 1999; Thunholm, 2005; Whitehurst, 2002) and incorporates findings from previous work investigating application of the OPP in the CF (Bruyn et al., 2005), while maintaining a large amount of the terminology, outputs generated and formal staff briefings used in the OPP in order to promote level of acceptance by CF practitioners and face validity of the IOPP.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2006
Accession Number
ADA473012

Entities

People

  • Farahnaz Bandali
  • Lisa Rehak
  • Lora B. Martin
  • Robert Vokac
  • Tab Lamoureux

Organizations

  • Defence Research and Development Canada

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Accuracy
  • Cognitive Science
  • Cognitive Workload
  • Command And Control
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Distance Learning
  • Doctrine
  • Education
  • Employment
  • Literature Surveys
  • Military Personnel
  • Personnel Management
  • Psychology
  • Situational Awareness
  • Teamwork
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Business Analytics
  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.

Technology Areas

  • Fully Networked C3
  • Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control