Operationalizing C2 Agility

IAMWG

December 13th 2006 Dr. Jimmie McEver

Ms. Danielle Martin

Evidence Based Research, Inc.

2Refining and Operationalizing C2 Agility

• CCRP has defined agility and articulated 6 constituent attributes: Robustness, Resilience, Responsiveness, Adaptiveness, Innovativeness, and Flexibility– Other definitions have emerged from other communities

• This study is aimed at building a unifying approach to understanding, measuring, and experimenting with agility and enabling factors with the C2 research community

• Operationalizing agility is an essential first step toward– Building a conceptual model of C2 agility– Facilitating community convergence on a definition and metrics– Ensuring effective experimentation and testing of C2 agility

concepts and enablers

3Effective Operational Definitions

• Ackoff and Sasieni (1968)* discussed the operationalization of the definition of a goal or objective– Goals are operationally defined when the degree of their

attainment can be measured– Operational statements of objectives and goals provide

instructions for quantitative self-evaluation

• A successful definition will be:– Valid: well-grounded or justifiable; appropriate to the end in view– Reliable: yielding the same result on repeated trials– Credible: offering reasonable grounds for being believed by

knowledgeable audiences

* Ackoff, Russell L. and Maurice W. Sasieni. Fundamentals of Operations Research. New York, London, Sidney: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1968, p. 430.

4Creating Effective Definitions

• Ackoff and Sasieni describe the steps to be taken to increase the effectiveness of definitions:– Examine as many past and current definitions of the concept as

possible, keeping their chronology in mind.– Try to identify the “core of meaning” that runs through the

different definitions.– Using this “core”, formulate a tentative definition.– Determine if this definition serves the decision maker’s

objectives; if not, make necessary revisions. – Have the resulting definition reviewed as widely as possible and

make any justifiable revisions suggested.

* Ackoff, Russell L. and Maurice W. Sasieni. Fundamentals of Operations Research. New York, London, Sidney: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1968, p. 390-391.

To allow communication of ideas to broader community, definitions should be consistent with everyday use of language

5Operationalizing Definitions*

• To convert the definition into an operational form, it is necessary to specify explicitly the following factors:– The object or class of objects to be observed.– The conditions (environment) under which the observations

should be made.– The operations, if any, that should be performed in that

environment.– The instruments, if any, and the metric standards that are

required to perform the specified operations. – The observation(s) that should be made.

• May have direct measures or indicators– When the concept can be directly measured– For those that are not observable, must be aware of the

indicators* Ackoff, Russell L. and Maurice W. Sasieni. Fundamentals of Operations

Research. New York, London, Sidney: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1968, p. 390-391.

6Purpose of this briefing

• Currently conducting review of related definitions from various communities– Attempting to converge on “core meaning” of terms

• Recognize that characterization of environment within which agility and associated attributes will be measured will be key

• Would like IAMWG feedback on:– Definitions reviews– Additional sources?– Other ideas to investigate in future work

7CCRP Perspective of C2 Agility:Definitions of Agility within CCRP Publications

• Organizational agility is the capacity to react more effectively in a rapidly changing operating environment. (Understanding Information Age Warfare, 2001, p197)

• Agility: adjusting to changes in the operational situation in a timely manner. (Understanding Information Age Warfare, 2001, p217)

• Agility is a key characteristic of an Information Age organization; a characteristic to be sought even at the sacrifice of seeking to perfect capabilities associated with specific missions or tasks. (Information Age Transformation, 2002, p82)

• Agile can be used to describe each component of an organization’s mission capability packages (MCPs), and/or an organization that can instantiate many MCPs. (Power to the Edge, 2003, p123)

• Agility: an ability of the forces to adapt, to learn and to change to meet the threats that they face. (The Agile Organization, 2005, p164)

• Agility presumes effective actions and implies a degree of self synchronization. (Understanding Command and Control, 2006, p201)

8CCRP: Key Attributes of C2 Agility(as defined in NCO CF v2 and PTTE)

Robustness Effectiveness across different contexts (the ability to maintain effectiveness across a range of tasks, situations, and conditions

The ability to maintain effectiveness across a range of tasks, situations, and conditions

Adaptation The ability to change work processes and the ability to change the organization in order to take advantage of characteristics of a situation.

The ability to change work processes and the ability to change the organization.

Resilience Overcoming losses, damage, or setbacks (the ability to recover from or adjust to misfortune/ damage, and the ability to degrade gracefully under attack or as a result of partial failure).

The ability to recover from or adjust to misfortune, damage, or a destabilizing perturbation in the environment

Agility always assumes effectiveness

Attribute NCO CF v2 Power to the Edge

Responsiveness The ability to react to a change in the environment in a timely manner.

The ability to react to a change in the environment in a timely manner.

Flexibility Identifying multiple ways to succeed and moving seamlessly between them.

The ability to employ multiple ways to succeed and the capacity to move seamlessly between them.

Innovation The ability to do new things and the ability to do old things in new ways.

The ability to do new things and the ability to do old things in new ways.

9The C2 Approach Space

peer-to-peerunitary

tightly constrained

unconstrained

allocation of decision rights

patte

rns

of in

tera

ctio

n

distribu

tion of

informat

ion

broad dissemination

tight control

classic C2

edge organization

Source: Alberts and Hayes, Understanding Command and Control, CCRP. 2006.

10

The C2 Problem Space

lowhigh

static

dynamic

familiarity

rate

of c

hang

e

stren

gth of

informat

ion po

sition

weak

strong

Cold War

21st century mission

Source: Alberts and Hayes, Understanding Command and Control, CCRP. 2006.

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C2 Agility and Enabling Factors

MCP CHARACTERISTICS

C2 QUALITIES

Quality of Intent

Quality of Decisions

Quality of Planning

Quality of Execution

AGILITY

MISSION CHALLENGES

Resilience

InnovationFlexibility

Responsiveness

Robustness

Breadth of Mission

Spectrum

Fleeting Opportunities (Pace of )

Fleeting Opportunities (Pace of )

Consciously Asymmetric Adversity

Novel Circumstances

Adversary Initiative/Firs

t Strike

Situational Mismatch

People

Materiel

C2Approach

Training,Experience,Education

AdaptationProcess

Organization

Agility: Significant Influences

Source: Alberts and Hayes, “Understanding Command and Control”, CCRP. 2006.

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Common-language* definitions for agility and its components

• Agility– Marked by ready ability to move with quick easy grace– Having a quick, resourceful, and adaptable character

• Robustness– Capability of performing without failure under a wide range of conditions

• Resilience– An ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change

• Responsiveness– Quickness to react appropriately or sympathetically

• Flexibility– A ready capability to adapt to new, different, or changing requirements

• Innovation– The introduction of something new – Innovative: characterized by, tending to, or introducing innovations

• Adaptation– Adjustment to environmental conditions

* Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary (online)

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UK (QinetiQ): Selected Perspectives on C2 Agility

• Three types of agility– Operational agility reflects the achievement of end states by an

organization (measured in terms of relative optempo)– Organizational agility reflects the means that an organization has to

achieve operational agility (in particular the capacity and structural flexibility of the means)

– Command agility reflects the affordance in ways of using the organizational agility, reflects the willingness and ability to use the available means to achieve desired ends

• Relevant problem space can be characterized using a three dimensional space (as in UC2)– Familiarity of the problem (low to high)– Rates of change inherent in the problem (low to high)– Strength of information position (low to high)

Dodd, Richardson, Alston, Beautement, Investigation into the C2 arrangements for Edge Organisations, QinetiQ, 2006)

14

UK (QinetiQ): Selected Perspectives (con’t)

• Key attributes of agility– [Having the] ability to adapt to or shape change– To be innovative, flexible and responsive (and grasp fleeting

opportunities)– To be robust and resilient (in the face of potentially catastrophic

disruption)• Agility can only be manifested at run-time• Mobility (from the game Othello)

– The number of moves player A has available, compared with the number that B has available

• Plastic: – Able to combine and employ elements on-the-fly in novel ways

• Unconstrained: – Able to adapt continuously to changing circumstances, including being

able to cope with sudden opportunities, changes, dislocations or disruptions

From “Agile and Adaptive Operations – Leveraging the Power of Complex Environments”, 2006 ICCRTS Proceedings, Beautement

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Australian Perspectives on C2 Agility

• Agility allows forces to cope with the unexpected.– DSTO, Fern Hill, Department of Defence, Canberra ACT 2006,

Australia

• Agility is complementary to capability strength and capability depth in contributing to mission effectiveness.

• Types of agility: tactical/operational, organisational, deployment, sustainment, acquisition, and conceptual.– Dekker, “Measuring the Agility of Networked Military Forces,”

Journal of Battlefield Technology Vol 9, No 1, March 2006

• Agility refers to the ability of an organisation, person, or military force to perceive an upcoming threat, and to respond quickly enough to it.– Dekker, “Agility in Networked Military Systems: A Simulation

Experiment”, 11th ICCRTS, Paper I-031, p. 3, Sept. 2006

16

Australian Perspectives on C2 Agility:Summary of Factors Affecting Agility

Source: Dekker, “Agility in Networked Military Systems: A Simulation Experiment”, 11th ICCRTS, Paper I-031, p. 3, Sept. 2006.

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Australian Perspectives on C2 Agility: Adaptation as the overarching concept (DSTO)

• DSTO’s Land Warfare Division has been exploring adaptation/adaptivity and applications of complex adaptive systems ideas to understanding and facilitating agility– TTCP has recently formed an Action Group to study Complex Adaptive

Systems for Defence (Dr. Grisogono, DSTO, leading) • Hallmarks of Adaptivity*

– ‘Intelligent’ context-appropriate behaviour – discovery and exploitation of advantages available in context

– Resilience to shocks, fast damage recovery– Robust to perturbations – core functions– Flexible responses – a range of different strategies for any given end– Agility – rapid change of tack to more effective behaviours– Innovation – leading to creation of new strategies and new structures– System learns from experience – information about past context is encoded

into the system . System success tends to increase as a result.– Different from reactive behaviour – Presupposes a concept of ‘better’ or ‘success’

* Source: Grisogono, Anne-Marie, What is adaptation?, TTCP Symposium, CAS for Defense, 2006.

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Australian Perspectives on C2 Agility:DSTO terminology from TTCP Symposium

• DSTO usage of terms: – system as a very general concept to include not just technical

systems, but also living organisms, interdependent groups of them, socio-technical systems, …

– adaptation as the overriding general concept, – robustness as a general property of stability of function against

various kinds of stress– and have defined specific concepts which we have labeled

Agility, Resilience, Flexibility and Responsiveness– evolution to mean incremental adaptation in populations– and learning to mean incremental change in individual systems– Related terms: adaptivity, adapted, adaptability

Labels can be changed – community needs to develop a language – but what is important is the concepts that are being distinguished.

Source: Grisogono, Anne-Marie, What is adaptation?, TTCP Symposium, CAS for Defense, 2006.

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Australian Perspectives on C2 Agility: DSTO Classes of Adaptivity

• Need to identify a classification of adaptive mechanisms based on the types of changes to be dealt with:– Whether internal or external– The time scale– The effects scale

• Provides a way of articulating what we aspire to achieve in dealing with these changes

• Four classes:– Responsiveness– Resilience– Agility– Flexibility

Source: Clark, Thea, Classes and Levels of Adaptivity, TTCP Symposium, CAS for Defense, 2006.

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Australian Perspectives on C2 Agility: Four Classes of Adaptivity

ClassChange to be dealt withChange to be dealt with

Response Response neededneeded

TimeTimescalescale

Effect Effect scalescale Int / ExtInt / Ext TimeTime

scalescaleEffect Effect scalescale

FlexibilityFlexibilitySlow

Time for new reqt to emerge

Slowtime for new

reqt to emerge

Major, wide-

ranging

Major, wide-

rangingExternalExternal To matchTo matchTo match MajorMajorMajor

Robustness of force to

the unknown future

AgilityInter-

mediate

Major and/or wide

External and/or internal

Rapid

Signifi-cantly

different strategy

Robustness of force to changing

conditions during ops

Im-Im-mediatemediate

Im-mediate

Respon-sivenessRespon-siveness FastFastFast LocalLocalLocal ExternalExternalExternal LocalLocalLocal

Robustness of force to

the unexpected during ops

Resilience FastFrom

local up to major

Internal Timely All scales

Robustness of force to damage, &

shocks during ops

Source: Clark, Thea, Classes and Levels of Adaptivity, TTCP Symposium, CAS for Defense, 2006.

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Australian Perspectives on C2 Agility:Generic Model of Adaptivity

Systemcontext

System and context interact

System ‘senses’ through outcome

of interaction

System changes (random or

triggered by outcome)

System processing of changed outcome might reinforce, inhibit or not affect system change

Key features:• Variation Variation of system, • FeedbackFeedback through interactioninteraction with context, and • SelectionSelection of adaptive change by fitness-linked retainment / inhibition.

This is a fixed context, with system fitness improving over time

If selection is If selection is linked to fitness linked to fitness system adaptssystem adapts

Some contextual

factors affect some

internal system

feedback strengths.

System and context interact

outcome of interaction might

be different as result of system

change

feedbackfeedback variationvariation

selectionselection

interactioninteraction

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Agility-related terms exist in other domains

• Robustness (complexity science, engineering, biology) [1]: – Maintenance of some desired system characteristics despite fluctuations in the

behavior of its component parts or its environment

• Tolerance (engineering) [2]:– The allowable deviation from a standard; especially : the range of variation

permitted in maintaining a specified dimension in machining a piece

• Fault tolerance (software design) [2]:– Relating to or being a computer or program with a self-contained backup system

that allows continued operation when major components fail

• Reliability: (engineering, general science) [2]– the extent to which an experiment, test, or measuring procedure yields the same

results on repeated trials

• Evolvability (biology) [3]: – The ability of random variations to sometimes produce improvement

[1] Carlson and Doyle, “Complexity and Robustness,” PNAS, 2002.[2] Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary (online), 2006.[3] Wagner and Altenberg, “Complex Adaptations and the Evolution of Evolvability,” Evolution 50 (3):

967-976, 1996.

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Observations

• Agility and its constituent attributes are characterized by a capacity to respond to change effectively– Attributes deal with particular classes of stimuli and responses

• We are interested in intentional, deliberate agility, rather than evolution/adaptation from random variation (as in nature)– But physical and biological systems may provide useful frameworks and

descriptors (e.g. concept of fitness)

• CCRP treats agility as an overarching term to describe the ability to succeed in the face of change– Adaptivity, robustness also used in other communities

• Understanding what agility is and how to recognize and measure it is different from understanding the factors that enable agility– The latter is what much of the literature involves

– Crisp, unambiguous definitions sparse

Need to get at the essence of what agility is, rather than its value and how it is achieved, to understand how to recognize and measure it

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Operationalizing C2 Agility

• Need metrics relating to aspect of organizational capability addressed

• Need quantitative treatment of “C2 problem space” within which to measure agility– Agility and its factors address the ability of an organization to

succeed in multiple parts of the problem space• Different missions, scenarios• Changing missions, scenarios

– Measurement of agility will require intelligent sampling of problem space

• Sampling methodology an important research question– Measurement of agility attributes may require “slicing” the

problem space in ways related to aspect of agility addressed• OFT representatives argue that learning is an essential

aspect of agility (Source: Terry Pudas)– Possible heuristic for some attributes of agility?– Or a factor determining the agility potential of an organization?

25

Back up material

26

C2 Agility

The Six Aspects of C2 Agility in the Domains of Warfare (Power to the Edge)

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Australian Perspectives on C2 Agility: DSTO Classes of Adaptivity

Class Description Stimulus Response

Respon-siveness

• Ability to react to a change in the environment in a timely manner• ‘Intelligent’ context-appropriate behaviour: i.e. recognise and take

advantage of opportunities, recognise and avoid dangers• The capacity to recognise and deal with a new threat or

opportunity in a timely way, as effectively as if there were ample time to plan and prepare for it.

Immediate external changes

Immediate response

Resilience • Ability to recover from or adjust to misfortune or damage and to degrade gracefully under attack or as a result of partial failure.

• Core functionality unaffected; quick recovery from damage with minimal interruption/ loss of capability

Local internal changes

Timely response

Agility • Ability to recognise when to shift from one strategy to another• Rapid change of tack during execution to more effective

behaviours

Significant external or internal changes

Significant and different response

Flexibility • Ability to create and maintain effectiveness across a range of tasks, situations, and conditions

• Structure and capability of the system can be reconfigured in different ways to do different things, under different sets of conditions

Major and wide-ranging external changes

Major responses

Source: Clark, Thea, Classes and Levels of Adaptivity, TTCP Symposium, CAS for Defense, 2006.