Quote Originally Posted by joelhar View Post
A third problem is automation. It would be nice to pop in some factors into a planning tool and at the anticipated Time of Effectiveness see certain factors rise or fall as expected. I'm grossly oversimplifying the entire process for illustration. There are massive efforts underway to create a human factors analytic environment, few will come to fruition in my opinion, but eventually they should produce something we can use.
My belief is that we will never see such an all-encompassing automation tool...and we shouldn't. As a society we've become enslaved by the desire and need for technology. Sometimes we just have to sit back and apply good ol' human knowledge, common sense, and "GUT FEELINGS" to situations.

Some of you might remember the old DECMAT (Decision Matrix) program that came on a 3.5 floppy diskette. On the X-axis you listed the possible COAs. On the Y-axis you listed the most important determining factors. In the intersecting boxes of the matrix the user assigned values, weighted them, and then added the totals to get a solution. I still use this method with pen and paper. The thing with DECMAT is not so much the automated outcome, but rather the fact that the user was still forced to think through the problem set. No rocket science required...