Review of all MoD guidance literature and externally published papers on HFI

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What is this report about?
This report reviews existing HFI guidance, literature and research and was undertaken specifically to identify the barriers to the application of HFI.

What problem does the report address?
From the review of barriers to HFI, this report suggests research areas to direct future research concerned with a more effective approach to HFI that addresses the identified shortcomings.

What is the benefit of this work?
This work will direct the future research conducted by the HFI DTC to specifically target those barriers to HFI that have prevented the full and successful application of HFI within MoD programmes.

Who should take note of it?

• DPA IPT personnel (particularly HFI Foci)
• MoD Industry Group and similar HF committees
• HF practitioners
• Service Principal Personnel Officers

What is the report's status?
This is one of four reports under the banner of a Work Package to identify barriers with the current HFI process. The other allied reports investigated the issue of barriers to HFI derived through interviews with MoD Integrated Project Team (IPT) personnel and HF practitioners working for civil organisations and a workshop discussion with MoD and industrial stakeholders. The final report which is under review, summarises all barriers to HFI and recommended prioritised areas of research that should be conducted to address the problems identified in the earlier reports.

What are the main issues addressed in the report?
A review of the available literature has shown that:

• A method is needed to ensure all communications, decisions, design changes etc. are recorded and are traceable. From this, all documentation must be accurate, complete, and appropriate.
• All proposed design changes need to be prioritised to support the associated decision making process.
• A quantifiable mechanism is required to check and ensure requirements have been adhered to.
• The approach to HFI must be simple, complete, support evolutionary acquisition and allow for design iteration.
• HFI needs to be promoted effectively and communicated throughout the stakeholder organisation.
• The requirements process needs to be participant led, uncover tasks/goals to be supported, allow for creativity and be systematic.
• The HFI approach needs to provide and encourage development activities to understand socio-technical environments. For example, allow for the consideration of corporate decision-making or corporate culture and how that impacts the way work is performed.
• Management of HFI should ensure:
  • HFI has the support of higher management within an organisation
  • That communication flows are managed
  • That HFI is seamlessly integrated within the lifecycle
  • Requirements and procedures are managed effectively and followed
  • Deadlines are realistic and achievable
• Soft approaches are incorporated in analysis and user and task categories are adequately and appropriately defined.
• The HFI framework triggers the use of tools when appropriate such as heuristics, modelling, descriptive scenarios and text diagrams.

What are the findings?
The findings reflect the recommendations below.

What is recommended?
It is recommended that the following be addressed:

• Allow a mechanism to incorporate the impact of company goals and the commercial decision making system within HFI.
• Ensure organisational structure supports HFI. For example, there is no single organisational point of responsibility for HFI across the MoD or the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA).
• The adoption of a corporate strategy for HFI (whether in industry or MoD) would improve the cost effectiveness of its implementation across projects.
• The establishment of a MoD/industry collaborative research committee for HFI could be used to identify, direct and rationalise research.
• The importance of HFI to operational capability requires emphasis within project teams. HFI is often seen as contributing to logistics rather than to Force capability.
• Ensure adequate resources are available for conducting HFI within projects. For example, Integrated Project Teams (IPT) typically have limited resources for HFI with individuals having to cover many projects.
• The HFI approach needs to be scaleable and accommodate projects of different sizes and complexity. The approach also needs processes to support evolutionary acquisition and rapid development.
• The overall approach needs to be trans-disciplinary in order for HFI activities to drive improvement efforts.
• The systematic collection and distribution of feedback (e.g. from design reviews, user trials, evaluations) needs to be firmly established within HFI.
• The HFI process and its supporting guidance documentation needs be made clearer and easier to use.
• Acquisition documentation needs to be in a format that can be referred to, modified and is relevant to all interested parties.
• The interchange of task related information between contractors, MoD and different specialties (e.g. training, ILS, systems design) should be encouraged to guard against work being duplicated across the HFI domains. A (tool supported) framework would allow the results of studies, for example Task Analysis, to be shared.
• The approach should incorporate decision points, go no-go decision areas where HFI criteria must be met so the project can progress to the next phase and provide a process to feed products from previous stages forward. The approach could provide a way to structure the decision framing and decision making through guidance (as opposed to dictating actual decisions).
• Increase integration of HFI at a system level. HFI activities and techniques need to link to goals within stages of engineering design and HF activities should proceed in parallel with technical development.
• An HF Manager should be responsible for driving integration, provide a single source for reporting information and attend system design meetings etc.
• Provide a means to handle the problems that arise due to the different priorities, approaches and tools used by managers and designers. Technology that interferes with shared knowledge should be avoided.
• Develop user friendly and valid methods and tools.
• HFI practitioners need to present themselves as business orientated engineers rather than as academics in order to demonstrate commercial awareness and viability.
• The method of describing users in a way that can aid system design still needs to be improved to include more contextual information such as organisational structures etc.

So what?
This work should help direct future research and the production of applied tools to directly address the problems encountered within MoD and Industry in ensuring that HFI gets addressed.

Why bother?
The lack of HFI in the lifecycle can contribute to system inefficiency or failure and there are many real life, high-profile examples where this has happened. Getting HFI right is essential to the development of safe, productive systems for which the appropriate levels of manpower are available to operate.