 The modern Air Force is a set of complex interrelated systems. The Air Force itself is an immense aerospace defense system. For example, the military airlift command is a transportation system. Your paycheck comes out of an accounting and finance system. As an Air Force member, you are part of a personnel system. For our purposes, a system is a combination of resources, human and material that operate in unison to achieve an objective. These systems are highly complicated products of a technological explosion that has had a profound impact on the Air Force people who operate, maintain and manage these systems. Their jobs are more complex than ever, and training them for these jobs requires a major effort at all levels of the Air Force. In developing its instructional programs, which are systems in themselves, the Air Force uses a process called Instructional System Development. This is one in a series of films on Instructional System Development, or ISD. ISD is a process for developing instructional programs which ensure that personnel are taught the knowledges, skills and attitudes they need to do their job successfully. ISD is a five-step process as this model shows. The subject of this film is system analysis, the first step in this process. System analysis involves collecting data about the system and then analyzing that data for its implications about what instruction is needed and who needs it. So we begin by looking for answers to a number of questions. What is its mission? In this case, its mission is to provide close air support for ground troops. What are its functions? It must have long staying power and carry heavy ordnance loads. What are its major components? Its navigation system, its radar system, avionics system and the like. What are its operational concepts? In this case, they include destruction of armoured targets such as tanks and personnel carriers. What are the functional responsibility of the personnel who work with the aircraft, the pilots, the navigators, the munitions loaders, the fueling specialists, aircraft maintenance specialists, ground equipment operations and so forth? Once you get the answers to these questions, you're in the ballpark. You know what kind of system you're working with. Next, you need to identify the tasks and duties that must be performed to operate and support the system. We call them the job performance requirements. Now the job performance requirements are the tasks required of the human component of the system, the condition under which these tasks must be performed and the quality standards for acceptable performance. Note the key words, tasks, conditions and quality standards. Here's an example. One of the job tasks for a crew member is to perform a pre-flight inspection of the aircraft. Now the conditions under which he makes this inspection are that he does it using a checklist and he works with an actual aircraft. The quality standard for this task is that he must do it correctly. Another example. One of the job tasks for this administrative specialist is to type an official Air Force letter. Does she have to memorize the details of format, how to prepare a multiple address letter, whether or not to number paragraphs, how many spaces between the body of the letter and the authority line? The administrative specialist should have a copy of Air Force Reg 10-1. Now this regulation includes an illustration and explanation of the format details, so memorizing these details should not be part of her training. So you see that specifying the conditions under which the job is performed may make a big difference as to what should be taught and how it's taught. The tasks must be accurately described and that description should include the conditions and the standard of performance. Air Force policy requires that the students be taught only what they need to do the job, no more, no less. When the job performance requirements are accurately identified, it is possible to develop training that's in line with this policy. Well then, how can one determine precisely what the job performance requirements are? One way would be to observe the expert do the job and record what you observe. You might supplement what you see by asking the expert some questions. This will help you to identify the skills and knowledges needed to do the job. This method probably produces the most accurate information, but it's also very time consuming. The administrative specialist is an example of a job that has many variations. In order to know what administrative specialists as a group do, you would have to use a large sample drawn from many different offices in many different organizations. For this kind of situation, checklists and questionnaires are much more efficient ways of gathering job information. The Air Force has developed an especially reliable approach using questionnaires. It's called the Occupational Survey. For relatively large programs, the Air Force uses occupational surveys to determine job tasks and performance requirements. The surveys are conducted by the Air Force Occupational Measurement Center at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas. Through the use of job inventories, occupational surveys obtain from a representative sample of job incumbents data about the duties and tasks they actually perform. Job inventories are usually mailed and contain questionnaires and or checklists. Questionnaires ask individuals to indicate the duties and tasks they actually perform as well as the materials, the tools, and equipment they use. The checklist contains a listing of duties and tasks taken from available data and believed to describe the specialty or positions within a specialty. In this type of survey, individuals identify by a check mark those duties and tasks perform. The results of the Occupational Survey are compiled to form an updated list of tasks and duties for the specialty or position. If further information is needed, it's obtained by individual interviews of representative workers and observations at the work site during which the interviewer asks questions and records data about the work being done. The job data gathering methods that have been mentioned all depend mainly on the availability of qualified people who have had experience doing the job. But how could you determine the job performance requirements for a job that has never been done before? If equipment is involved, study the related documents, logistics data, procedural guides, maintenance manuals, and similar documents. Where these documents are inadequate, you may have to consult the designers, engineers, and technicians who planned and developed the system. Most new or advanced systems are really the second or third generation of existing equipment. Many similarities may exist in job tasks between the new system and similar systems that already exist. Now, you may be able to make educated guesses about the new system based on what you know about similar systems that have been around for a while. Whatever means you use to determine the job performance requirements, don't forget that most systems are not static. Changes are made and often these changes are planned. Try to include reliable advanced planning information in the data you gather so that your instructional system won't be obsolete by the time it's ready to be implemented. The job task data must be analyzed for two things. Now, the first is the personnel implications. That is, what officer and enlisted Air Force Specialties will be needed to operate and support the system? You should also be able to come up with an estimate of how many of each Air Force Specialty will be needed. The other determination that must be made is, will the people who are to be assigned to the job be able to handle it without any instruction? If qualified personnel are available, it's not necessary to proceed any further with the ISD process, but if instruction will be needed, then you should proceed with the next step of the ISD process. So that briefly is the first step in the ISD process. It's a thorough analysis of every aspect of the operational system, the duties and tasks needed to support it and the educational situation for which there may or may not be a need for instruction. If instruction is needed, you have the basic data to proceed with the next four steps of the ISD process to develop a program that will teach students very thoroughly everything they need to know, but only what they need to know to do their job. But before you can develop that training program, you must determine what the system and the jobs that operate and support it are all about. That's system analysis.