4. Service Analysis and Strategic Planning (5 pgs)



4-1 Service Analysis and Strategic Planning

Service Analysis and Strategic Planning (SASP) is the first stage in the formal AMS process once a proposed acquisition investment has been approved for evaluation by the FAA Joint Resources Council.

In this stage the HF aspects of operational needs, shortfalls and concept changes are analyzed.

SASP Activities. HF tasks completed during SASP include:

P. 4-2: HF Involvement

P. 4-3: HF Aspects of Operational Needs 

P. 4-4: HF Aspects of Shortfalls (see ShortfallAnalysisReportGuide.doc (live.com))

P. 4-5: HF Aspects of Concept Changes

The HF analyses may include consideration of factors such as workflow, usability, procedures, equipment, workload/staffing, human errors and operational suitability. It can include consideration of both the materiel (e.g., equipment) and non-material (e.g., procedures) aspects of needs, shortfalls, and operational concepts. Some of this content may be supported by the transfer package from prior Research for Service Analysis.

A list of the relevant HF questions to be addressed during SASP and relevant documents are contained in the HF Acquisition Management System (AMS) Lifecycle Checklist.4-2 Service Analysis and Strategic Planning

HF Involvement. SASP indicates: “The service organization or program office, facilitated by the Human Factors Division (ANG-C1), should address HF as early as practical to minimize technical, programmatic, and operational risk. In order to assess the appropriate level of HF involvement, ANG-C1 can assist coordination with agency HF resources such as the HF Acquisition Working Group to identify HF specialists that might provide direct support or other resources to a program. Ideally, HF specialists are involved prior to the CRD (Concept and Requirements Definition) phase and throughout the AMS lifecycle to help gather data about the service environment and participate in the preliminary shortfall analysis”.

HF input to documentation during and subsequent to SASP provides essential HF information upon which to build good requirements, supporting the preparation of cost, benefit, and risk analyses and developing plans, specifications, and a statement of work. This includes consideration of how:

Operational concept, system architecture, procedures and human-system interface design impact user performance (efficiency and safety)

Human-systems considerations impact human resources or performance outside the boundary of the product being acquired

4-3 Service Analysis and Strategic Planning

HF Aspects of Operational Needs. The FAA document “Guidelines for Service Analysis & Strategic Planning (SASP) and Concept & Requirements Definition (CRD)” indicates that, as part of SASP (Service Analysis and Strategic Planning):

“Using a service-level approach, issues within the operational, business, data and information, technology, organizational, process, and people (including human factors) areas that might affect delivery of targeted business outcomes are identified. The needs identified in the FAA operational environment usually represent service shortfalls associated with Enterprise information management and agency goals and objectives.”

“In addition, it will be necessary to obtain information on new technologies and methodologies that might change the way services are provided in the future.”

4-4 Service Analysis and Strategic Planning

HF Aspects of Shortfalls. There are many types of shortfalls that should be considered, such as missing functionality, bad business process, data coming from a source that is not a trusted source (authoritative or approved replicated sources), data availability or data accuracy, and security shortfalls. To characterize shortfalls, relevant human performance deficiencies and critical human performance requirements need to be defined. Preliminary HF inputs could include:

Reviewing the results of operational analyses of fielded systems, services, facilities and other assets, as well as published research, technology transfers, and related documents from external organizations such as Eurocontrol, MIT Lincoln Labs, MITRE and NASA

Reviewing the failure reports for operational systems and equipment

Reviewing failure and safety issues reports (providing indications of performance deficiencies in statements such as "user failed to detect or identify")

Soliciting feedback from users and customers of relevant FAA services

Identifying and interviewing Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) regarding human performance issues surrounding the legacy system

Qualitatively characterizing shortfalls and documenting where human performance contributes to shortfalls describing human performance limitations that are relevant to the system design (examples include working memory, task completion times for data entry, mental workload, vigilance fatigue, visually tracking multiple simultaneous targets, etc.)

Capturing human performance issues in a shortfall analysis lays the foundation for traceability to preliminary program requirements as well as measures of performance, effectiveness and suitability in the requirements definition process. In an air traffic control example, this could be errors detecting/acquiring/controlling aircraft entering a controller's sector.4-5 Service Analysis and Strategic Planning

HF Aspects of Concept Changes. This effort focuses on the specification of changes in the operational concept that encompass an explicit set of use cases and scenarios. This requires participation in meetings discussing use cases, reviewing use case outlines and developing scenarios, and documenting potential human performance risk areas that need to be evaluated during concept demonstration/validation exercises.

The development of use cases and scenarios also requires completing a task analysis and function allocation analysis, defining the assignment of the roles and responsibilities of key participants (e.g., controllers, traffic managers and maintenance technicians). And it involves identification of the functional and information requirements necessary to support human performance.

The task and function analyses help to ensure that necessary task sequences are demonstrated from end-to-end in the scenarios and that all necessary functionality has been identified for review and analysis as part of concept demonstration and evaluation based on heuristic analyses, prototyping and Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) studies. Note that this effort may draw upon results from preceding Research for Service Analysis.