Military units conduct operations. Operation needs to have a clear endstate and ways to measure the success. Operations are planned with a planning process and executed with mission command. Intelligence creates the understanding of the operational environment to the units. Targeting aims to create effects to reduce the capabilities of the adversary.
There are interdependencies in every organization and military is no exception. Planning gives guidance and objectives. Planning is supported by intelligence and operations. Operations execute the plans with its capabilities and is supported by intelligence. Assessment is done constantly regarding own and adversary actions.
Planning process is a problem-solving technique. Completion of all steps slavishly is not an intrinsic value. (US Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2017; Runyon, 2004) To overcome this JP 5-0 (US Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2017) presents the concept of operational art. Combination of planning and operational art is easy to understand, but difficult to master. Military planning process is historically
combat proven, and due to formalized structure, it can be a practical tool to reduce biases and inconsistency in decision-making.
It is prudent to acknowledge that all planning is based on imperfect knowledge and assumptions, because it is about envisioning events that unfold in the future. This is a challenge for effective planning, as uncertainty increases with the length of the planning horizon. Key value is the understanding and learning that happens during planning process, which facilitates decision making in changing circumstances. (Department of the army, 2010b)
Second key aspect of planning is synchronization of actions in time and space in order to generate maximum effort in decisive point and time. Due to future uncertainties one must remember that synchronization is a “way”, not an
“end”. It must be balanced with agility and initiative. (Department of the army, 2010b)
Military planning process is subject for critique and can be enhanced. Some proposed enhancements are use of artificial intelligence, automation tools on wargaming, and application of collaborative methods and tools on decision making. These are all valid enhancements but if the people do not learn about the process itself and various problem-solving techniques, then process is useless.
Plans need to be executed and this requires understanding of the ever-changing environment. John Boyd’s OODA-loop is the embodiment of this issue.
Boyd developed the concepts of observation, orientation, decision, action and self-correcting loop. OODA-loop represents an evolving, open-ended process of self-organization, emergence and natural selection. Key statement is that in order to win one must be able to get inside adversary’s OODA loop (Boyd, 1996).
Boyd has influenced military planning and execution processes as they gather observations, create orientation, and acknowledges that planning is based on imperfect knowledge and assumptions, because it is about envisioning events that unfold in the future. Mental models that are created during planning process facilitate decision making in changing circumstances. In order to win, decision-making process must be faster than of adversary. Decision decision-making happens in a cycle or loop, which calls for constant destruction and creation of mental patterns.
(Boyd, 1976b)
Mission command has evolved to be the US army’s way of real-time operations execution and it takes several notions from OODA-loop. Main purpose of mission command is to create disciplined initiative within teams by empowering agility and adaptivity. It emphasizes leader’s centralized intent, which is combined to decentralized execution of tasks by teams. (Department of the Army, 2012)
Besides leading operations leader’s responsibility is to develop his team and to communicate. Communication efforts inform and influence cooperation partners as needed to create shared understanding and synchronize actions.
Mission command cannot be conducted without a system which is used for information management, communication, collaboration and providing working environment (Department of the Army, 2012).
Intelligence is the structured process to provide knowledge out of mixed observed data. Targeting uses the intelligence to analyse the weaknesses of adversary and create effects through them. There are several different descriptions of intelligence and targeting processes, but the overall goal is usually the same; Provide actionable intelligence to stakeholders and synchronize the effects to the adversary in most effective way. There are intelligence cycles with varying number of steps. Some have three, others eight. Still they provide the same result.
Intelligence and targeting are activities that support the overall mission.
Mission accomplishment is built by planning and executing tasks which are supported by intelligence. The structural process in intelligence and targeting is important due to this co-operation. Processes need to be separated due to their different functionality but communicated effectively between practitioners in order to be interlinked and aligned towards a common goal through mission command.
Continuous assessment of all previous activities is the orientation that Boyd’s OODA-loop emphasizes. Fundamental question of assessment is whether the original plan or order is still relevant. This is done by establishing cause and effect relations, in which causes are the actions, and effects are results of those actions. (Department of the army, 2010b) Only by constantly assessing yourself, opponent and the environment one can achieve the advantage in ever-changing environment.
6 AGILE SUPPORT TO FRAMEWORK CREATION
"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change"
- Stephen Hawking -
This is a descriptive chapter which builds to the knowledge base section in information systems research framework (Hevner et al., 2004). In the design science research methodology process this chapter comprises a part of phase 2;
defining objectives of a solution and enables phase 3; design and development of the construct (Peffers et al., 2007). This chapter also adds to exaptation in DSR knowledge contribution framework, which means extending known solutions e.g. agile methodology to new problems i.e. red teaming in the information security management (Gregor & Hevner, 2013).
When agile development is mentioned people tend to think of software engineering. There are other interpretations as well. Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson was chief research engineer at Lockheed’s SkunkWorks®, an official pseudonym for Lockheed Advanced Development projects. In 1943 his team, consisting of just 28 hand-picked engineers, was given a task to develop a jetfighter to counter the growing threat from Germany. The XP-80 was designed and built in just 143 days, a somewhat agile effort in terms of time used for the project. Kelly had 14 rules of management, of which four were linked to organizing work. (Hilbert, 2017; Wikipedia, 2019a; Wikipedia, 2019b)
Decades later seventeen software development orientated people converged in Utah to find out alternatives for heavyweight software development processes. Values and principles for agile methodology emerged from this meeting in the form of agile manifesto in 2001 (Beck & all, 2001).
Similarities can be seen when Kelly’s working rules are compared with core values and principles of agile manifesto. (Hilbert, 2017)
TABLE 5 Kelly Johnson rules, agile values & principles - comparison.
Kelly Johnson 1943 (World of
skunkworks, 2013) Agile core values 2001 (Beck & all, must be restricted. Use a small number of good people.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Motivated individuals can get the job done, when given the right
collaboration over Business stakeholders and
developers must work together daily.
organization and the contractor, very close cooperation and liaison on a day-to-day basis.
contract
negotiation. The most efficient communication is conducted face to face. have been tried and tested in industry and military for decades. They are the response to bureaucracy and hierarchical management structures (Hilbert, 2017).
Agile manifesto was driven by several methods and method developers and its evolution can be traced back to 1980’s. Common aim of agile methods is to manage software development in volatile business environment. Methods range from abstract principles to concrete guidance. Agile processes do not guarantee agility. Tools and working methods used in software development need to be agile also, i.e. it should be possible to adjust them depending on situation. Some agile methods cover only certain parts of software development lifecycle, and some of them do not support project management. Scrum is an example of agile method that supports project management, it can be adjusted to different situations and has empirical support. (Abrahamsson et al., 2003)
Agile development methods are based on a rationale which is grounded on human reality. Any product development invites substantial amount of learning, innovation, and therefore inevitable change. Agile methods emphasize developing products incrementally to accommodate the change. Users have possibility to use initial version quickly, which provides iterative feedback for developers. (Sutherland & Schwaber, 2011) Agile practices and agile scaling methods are implemented in the red teaming framework creation during this study.