Operational Readiness

Military

Operational readiness in the world of military aircraft includes time in a simulator such as the P-3 with space for five crew members, The P-3 dates to the 1960s and is now out of production, and at $36 million it is an expensive asset to exercise in the real world, but it is a complex system with critical missions for which it must be operationally ready. Simulation is a more cost-effective option. The realistic training environment involves photo databases, communications links, target sensors, acoustic modeling, and, in general, total control of the training environment by the observer/instructor. It allows monitoring [Page 695]of problems and scenarios, crew displays, and replay/mission debrief. Rather than deploy in an expensive aircraft on an antisubmarine warfare or surveillance mission, the crew can remain at home and simulate contact, weapons firing, and communications back to unit headquarters.

Disaster Preparedness Activities

For disasters and emergencies, operational readiness is hard to sustain. OR depends on many components. It begins with having adequate policy and procedures established, but it also involves having a survivable and functional emergency operations center (EOC). An established EOC offers organizations benefits including on-the-job skilled people, ongoing training, and exercise capability. Most disaster preparedness organizations are located in areas where natural disasters or human-made ones are fairly frequent, say every couple of years over a 40-year stretch. Actual events train people in real-world actions, ensuring that they are operationally ready. In the gaps between real-world events, training and exercises are essential, whether through national agencies’ courses or elsewhere.

Above all, OR depends on frequent and regular meetings of those who will staff the EOC in event of a disaster. Monthly meetings are opportunities to review policy and procedure, planning, and future events. Tabletop exercises can take place during some meetings, with EOC team members talking about how they would handle a given scenario, what information they would need, and what problems might arise. Also valuable are disaster exercises to the level of testing the readiness of two or more EOCs, with communications between the two as the exercise and Master Scenario Events List unfold.

If an exercise is realistic enough, participants actually feel pressure and emotion, and it is easy to detect who can handle stress and who has problems. Pre-announced exercises are better than surprise ones because participants brush up on jobs and the overall organizational mission. Frequent exercises help bring newcomers up to speed (there are always newcomers as old-timers retire or otherwise leave.) OR is an ongoing process, not a straight line but a bumpy upward progression if done right, or a mountain range with dangerous cliffs if neglected.

Software Development and Maintenance

Operational readiness is also a concern for software developers. It is often a subpractice of release. As skeptics note, without OR, what results is “dead cat” syndrome—dead cats tossed over the partition to operations from solutions. The effective way to ensure OR is to build it into all phases of software development, from architecture through design, build, test, release, and evaluate. OR is not a major investment of time or money but does require a degree of formalization and suffers from inattentiveness. Checklists, as always, are invaluable in ensuring OR, whether of software or another asset. Although it takes time to get OR into the entire life cycle, it does happen, with checklists “iteratively revisited” throughout the project. To work, it should be somewhat flexible. Iteration after iteration of the same process through change cycles for production items is cumbersome and undesirable; still, there needs to be some formal OR measurement of changes or the credibility of the initial OR documentation comes into question.

...