Working with a group of early-stage start-ups recently, most with backgrounds outside the Defence sector, I had a bit of an ah-ha moment.

I’ve grown up in a world where we consider problems through an operational lens; start with key use cases and model scenarios in order to understand more about the impact a concept might have, before we dive into design effort. You can learn a lot about a hypothesis you have on a capability plus up and more often than not, something unexpected happens. It’s fast and cheap to iterate on your idea at this very early concept stage, so you can iterate and run your analysis over and over again, before you’ve put pen to paper on your design.

Given how effective this approach is, why aren’t we using these techniques more widely, beyond Defence? I’m not sure why we’re not and certainly think we could be really easily!

Operational Analysis techniques in simple terms, leverage a Systems Thinking approach to problem-solving. Viewing problems as part of a larger, interconnected system; focusing on how different parts influence each other. It emphasises understanding the relationships, interdependencies, and dynamic behaviour within the complete system, rather than isolating individual elements. It’s a powerful way to consider problems and can be applied in any field of work, domain or walk of life. It’s a great way to step back from the immediate issues and help unlock new paths forward.

“So, how do I give this a go?” I hear you ask. Here are some simple steps:

• Draw up illustratively, the key use case for your product. In a Defence context, this high-level operational context diagram is often referred to as an OV-1.
• Draw an “As Is” view – how things operate today, as well as a “To Be” view – how things will operate with your new concept incorporated.
• Run some modelling to show how the scenario plays out, with and without your product offering. You don’t need complex and expensive tools to do this.
• If your results give you unexpected answers, play with your concept, make adjustments and run again.
• You now have valuable data to illustrate the impact your capability could have, before you’ve spent time and money on design, build and test.

Operational analysis for any new concept, really can be applied anywhere; after all, everything in life is a complex system of systems!

If you’re curious to learn more or discuss how these techniques might be applied to you business, please do reach out!