On a Second Generation Strategic Decision-Making Process for the Canadian Forces

In 2005, the Canadian Forces’ (CF) Chief of Defence Staff announced the commencement of the transformation of the CF. As with any complex organization, transformation of its structure and processes is not simple. However, the success of such a transition “depends upon leadership first identifying and understanding the thematic components of the past, and then, learning how to adapt and exploit the thematic strengths ‘today’ for the benefit of ‘tomorrow’ ” [1]. While several themes have been identified within the CF transformation, a theme in which the analytical community plays a vital role is strategic decision-making. Strategic decision-making, in the context of defence acquisitions, has traditionally been a reactive process [2]. In an effort to migrate defence acquisitions towards a proactive process, a rational forward-looking decision-making process has been developed: the Force Development (FD) process. At the core of this process is Capability Based Planning (CBP), whose analytical process and associated tools provide decision-makers with an objective assessment of capability deficiencies, adequacies, and affluences. This objective assessment is central to the following defence acquisition trade-off analysis, whose output is a cost-effective strategic capability roadmap. The FD process and first generation CBP analytical process have been recently reported [3][4][5][6]. Development of the second generation CBP analytical process has now been completed, which focused on advancement of the process and tools. In this paper a brief summary of the FD process is presented. This is followed by an overview of the second generation CBP analytical process, including a description of its methods with an emphasis on how they work together and their advancements since the first generation. This is followed by a discussion of the proposed next-generation CBP analytical process and tools. Key implementation challenges are highlighted.