The way you have seen it is used in practice may differ from the way the TRADOC Operational Concept and now doctrine describe it, but Commander's Appreciation and Campaign Design indicates that Selil's description is pretty accurate...at least if you are going to use the term "design" when some other term might be more appropriate:
http://www.tradoc.army.mil/tpubs/pams/p525-5-500.pdf
The first chapter helped me understand design much better. Particularly liked this quote:
(3) Every ill-structured problem is essentially unique and novel. Historical analogies may provide useful insights—particularly on individual aspects of a larger problem—but the differences between even similar situations are profound and significant. The political goals at stake, stakeholders involved, cultural milieu, histories, and other dynamics will all be novel and unique to a particular situation.
Believe some miss the point that not every Soldier must read/study doctrine. But instructors/trainers at institutional level must study it to create lesson plans that are doctrinally-founded. Combat training centers O/Cs and other evaluators need some evaluation source based on more than opinion of how they did it in their particular unit under a unique commander/leader/staff officer, in a particular theater and year in theater, and a unique village, valley and ethnic/tribal mix when public opinion and the threat may have differed substantially.
In my solely academic perspective, the lesson plans we create are based on collective tasks which in turn are based on doctrine, task lists, and researched lessons learned. In our particular case, we used the FM 5-0 (and FM 3-0, & previous 5-0.1) "plan, prepare, execute, and assess continuously" as the outline for many lessons on multiple subjects...because it works and helps you not to forget something. That "operations process" and troop-leading procedures are probably most of what your typical NCO must understand where FM 5-0 is concerned.
I'm still not sure from the TRADOC Concept what planning products result from "Design." Suspect they exist in multiple formats and differ based on the nature of the ill-structured problem and command-designated courses of action that may change based on subject matter experts briefings. But as "Global Scout" indicates, many may be classified, many are probably unique to particular commanders, and most "Design" probably involves operational/strategic commanders and tactical units like SOF that have strategic influence.
Also believe many critical of the writing don't comprehend that it is often a team effort with multiple reviewers altering content to leave a hodgepodge of styles and substance by the time it is approved. It may not be pretty, but if it isn't done, you are left relying on opinions of how to do things based on historical experiences/perspectives of particular units/individuals that no longer apply.
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