NCW - 10th Anniversary

Although I did not get to attend the NCW 2008 conference in Washington this year, I was able to review some of the presentations.

John Garstka, one of the shapers of NCW theory, had an interesting discussion of NCW at the 10 year mark.

Few things frustrate me more than the fact that very few architects seem to know that there are a handful of key concept diagrams for NCW. Two of these are Figures 5 and 11 of "The Implementation of Network Centric Warfare."

John updated Figure 5 in his presentation. The changes are all in the Social and Cognitive domains and are worth discussing:

• "New Processes" has been removed.


• "Common Operating Picture", "Individual Situation Awareness", and "Shared Situation Awareness" have been added.


• "Decision Making" has been added.


• "Information Sharing" now spans the Information and Cognitive & Social domains.


• "Self-Synchronization" now is partially in the Physical domain.

I had two snap reactions:

• The initial diagram implied that Processes are how "top-down" is done, and Self-Synchronization is how "bottom-up" is done. This is clearly simplistic, if not the most dangerous kind of deception (an incomplete truth).


• Decision Making is both Individual and Shared, and is "top-down" in the sense that it's not emergent in the way Self-Synchronization is. This reflects the emphasis that Individual and Shared Sensemaking received in Figure 11.

If you're an SE or SA and are not familiar with these two figures, I urge you to make them a part of your operational DNA...these patterns are fundamental and pervasive in a way that very few things are.