IT 2 EC 2020 IT 2 EC Extended Abstract Template Presentation/Panel Stronger threads: The critical requirement for enabling the Competency- Based Workforce Brian Moon 1 1 Chief Technology Officer, Perigean Technologies, Fredericksburg, VA, USA Abstract — Essential advancements toward enabling the competency-based wokforce (CBW) have been made in the past few years. As interest grows and new endeavours are pursued, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that many of the key advancements have been made without sufficient connectivity to others. To realize the full potential, more focus must be placed on stitching together the essential elements that can enable the CBW. This presentation offers insights from the point of view of a practitioner who has been working in the seams to enable competency-based workforces in military and commercial contexts, and suggestions regarding the requirements of the threads necessary to stitch the elements more tightly together. 1 The Essential Elements of a Competency-Based Workforce The competency-based workforce (CBW) movement is been well underway, as industries have come to realize that industrial age models of workforce development are no longer satisfactory to survive in information-rich, cognitively complex domains. Previous approaches that supported hiring by qualifications, one-size-fits-all training, and periodic performance review, are being replaced by techniques and tools that enable more exact definition of performance requirements, more adaptive and higher fidelity learning experiences, and deeper assessment on performance across all venues of performance. The proliferation of tools and techniques is serving to gain coverage over the essential elements of the CBW, Fig. 1. The essential elements that enable CBW . which are: Explicit delineation of all tasks and the associated Thus, significant effort and resources have been - competencies required for efficient and effective expended in the past few decades to enable efficiencies and performance of a job (“Delineation”) more refined capabilities in each of these areas. The pace Experiences that enable the development of the of advancement in each has increased significantly along - competencies (“Development”) with broader technology advances. Techniques such as Accurate and efficient assessment of the cognitive task analysis (CTA, [1]) have allowed for the - achievement of the competencies (“Assessment”) . detailed descriptions of the cognitive elements of These three elements comprise the core capabilities performance expected at increasing levels of proficiency. that organizations must develop to enable a CBW. The Modeling and simulation technologies have created ever- simple diagram in figure 1 demonstrates their more-close replications of working conditions that enable interconnectedness to each other and other organizational safe and efficient practicing of critical skills and tracking elements. all manner of data. Access to such data has, in turn, Each element present challenges to any organization, spawned the development of new, more scrutinous not the least of which are the time, costs, and ironically methods for evaluation how workers are performing that competencies associated with committing to doing them are applicable even during operational conditions. properly. Delineation takes time and the skills to conduct Yet, as the dotted red lines in figure 1 suggest, the processes such as CTA are often not resident. interconnectedness of the elements remains the critical Development, beyond the basic introductions to a job, is challenge to the entire endeavour of CBW. As each of the too often left to the performer to manage during operating elements has advances, insignificant effort and resources conditions. And assessment, if conducted at all, typically have been committed to stitching them together in ways relies on elementary testing and/or fleeting observations. that enable a cohesive and efficient CBW.
IT 2 EC 2020 IT 2 EC Extended Abstract Template Presentation/Panel 2 Challenges in stitching and ‘thread’ a reshaping of the nature of the work is required, and the traditional “waterfall” approach to delineation becomes requirements problematic. This challenge was especially notable in one project where new adversarial tactics were being For two decades, the author has been involved in efforts in developed almost daily. By the time that competencies had both military and commercial domains to address the been fully developed and implemented in a safe learning individual elements and, more recently, the stitching environment – i.e., a simulation – the operational between them. These have included: delineation projects environment had changed significantly. in domains as varied as nuclear engineering, military Lessons learned approaches that focus on rapid deception, piloting, consumer goods and pet food refinement to the delineations will certainly be a necessary production [2]; development projects for defeating component thread. But ultimately, tools will be needed to improvised explosive devices [3]; and assessment projects support the just-in-time incorporation of the lessons in domains including cyber security [4]. Each effort has learned. Changes to official documentation (e.g., task lists) brought into high relief the challenges noted above. But a and developing valid and reliable assessments have few in particular have revealed the brittleness of the historically required significant process work across teams stitching between the essential elements. of stakeholders using industry standard formats and The following offers insights into the brittleness of the techniques. Adding flexibility to this thread may hold over stitching and suggest what will be necessary for the threads advantages, too, as assessment techniques that allow for to more securely tie together the elements. For the sake of rapid authoring emerge [8]. privacy, the following examples do not identify the domain – the reader is assured that they are drawn some of the domains noted above. 2.3 Tracking Tracking a performer’s levels of competency across the 2.1 Delineation to Development and Assessment various requirements for their role(s) has traditionally been the managed by both the performer and the organization – Between position descriptions, essential task lists, from collecting certificates and recommendations to performance review criteria, most organizations operate updating resumes and online profiles. While tools to aid under the belief that their enabling functions and roles are the collation of such data have been around for a while, described to a level of specificity to get the job done. A closer inspection of organizations’ documentation, they often fail to fully integrate and align the picture and/or do not capture data at the level of competency. however, has often revealed that descriptions of the Performance and achievements are presumed to be cognitive requirement for performance are missing. In one indicative of competencies held, resulting in surprise when such example, significant resources had been invested to provide a very high fidelity of development experiences – the full range of requirements of the job become apparent. But knowing what data to track and having “systems” from simulators to instructor-coached equipment (which might include people) adequately instrumented operation. But guided by a description of the domain that (which might include manual reporting) is no trivial only defined performance to the mission phase level, the matter. One example of attempting to do this very thing instructional strategies were limited to low-pressure demonstrated just how complex is the task to connect mission execution and assessing performance by use of systems, let alone generate, collate, disambiguate, analyse, gross-measure rubrics. and report such data in real-time. Even when significant Approaches such as mastery models [5] offer the data is known about performers prior to engaging in a potential for performance to be delineated down to the development activities, tracking and visualizing cognitive requirements of performance expected at emergent levels of proficiency – i.e., novice to competent performance across time, in ways that are meaningful to stakeholders and that inform adaptive experiences and to expert. Such microscopic views of performance make accurate assessment, remains an elusive goal. obvious the sorts of development activities that will be Data sharing technologies such as xAPI [9] and necessary to enable the achievement of expertise, competency framework systems [10] are emerging to offer particularly when blending strategies [6]. And they specify heretofore unavailable insight into worker performance. the sorts of behavioural indicators that enable gathering the Such tools are the sine qua non of this thread and will right sorts of data for deep assessment from any require significant future work to reach the levels of development activity. Rapidizing the process must be a deployment that organizations will need to enable a CBW. goal for implementing such approaches [7]. Acknowledgements 2.2 Development informing Delineation and Assessment The author thanks the organizations that provided opportunities to gain these insights, and session chair Dr. A CBW is most necessary in domains that are undergoing Robby Robson for the chance to share them. significant change, are highly complex, and/or are emergent. Such tumultuous conditions aggravate the challenge of closing the loop between development and delineation and assessment. As new knowledge is developed and new skills and aptitudes become necessary,
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