mission analysis / mission formulation / mission planning

• "Interpretation and evaluation of the team's mission, including identification of its main tasks as well as the operative environmental conditions and team resources available for mission execution" (p. 363 table, 365 text) definition
  • Would happen during staff meetings, retreats, AARs
  • Each team member thinks about their charge within the parameters of "team abilities, resources, and time constraints" (p. 365)
  • Verbal discussions to get shared vision of purpose and objectives
  • Includes both backward evaluation (AAR) and forward visioning
    • Backward, we know that better they understand causes of previous performance, better can plan for future (Blickensderfer, Cannon-Bowers, & Salas, 1997)
    • Forwards, interpreting future mission in context of environment
  • If don't do this step, will work totally reactively, and will be undermined by changing circumstances; and their efforts may be misguided until too late (Gersick, 1988)
  • me This sounds like a stage where teams would build shared interaction mental models and strategic models? Also, including AARs here means this includes the process of adaptation
    • Edit - Not really. Seems to be more an overall first step - what are we dealing with, what have past successes looked like in a similar space (note, AI can inform this), how does that inform our plans for this. And the very specifics of how we'll get there are more part of strategy formulation.
• QUESTION where does team charter fit into this? More related to mission analysis, or to strategy formulation?

• me This sounds like a stage where teams would build shared interaction mental models and strategic models? Also, including AARs here means this includes the process of adaptation

  • Edit - Not really. Seems to be more an overall first step - what are we dealing with, what have past successes looked like in a similar space (note, AI can inform this), how does that inform our plans for this. And the very specifics of how we'll get there are more part of strategy formulation.
  • In which case, the challenge I put for
    How would machines learn from After Action Reviews?
    would then move to that process.

• Tech high in communication richness dimension:

  • Helps:
    • Clearer understanding of shared vision, through use of other mediums (i.e., collaborative virtual diagramming)
    • Makes visual diagrams more accessible to individuals who do not possess the skill to draw ideas on their own
  • Opportunities:
  • Challenges:

• Tech high in AI dimension:

  • Helps:
    • Feed information to team, find potentially similar situations or missions from a huge database of previous similar situations that this or similar teams have faced, using algorithms to find similarities. What have past successes looked like, in a similar space?
      • (Medical teams - think finding similar potential diagnoses or potential hazards before a surgery (this is being developed - need to find citations). Army teams, such as finding similar patterns of terrain from previous missions. Key for where AI more helpful, is where there is a) a huge amount of data to comb through, and/or b) very limited time to find relevant data and make decision.)
  • Opportunities:
    • (don't think this exists yet): Help with overlapping lexicons and unfamiliar languages. See here or here.
  • Challenges:
    • How would machines learn from After Action Reviews?
    • Difficulty for humans to understand the capabilities of AI that may work with the team during a mission.

• Tech high in Augmenting Intelligence dimension:

  • Helps:
    • External scaffold to store and retrieve rich data about resource parameters that team must operate within, and team abilities
    • Project Management tools to help plan the timeline and scope of the mission (more specific breakdown is more relevant for strategy formulation, see later).
    • PM software can increase clarity of goals, helping obtain consensus on work objectives - IA
  • Opportunities:
  • Challenges: