Design and Evaluation of Tools to Support Command and Control Warfare Team Activities.

Since collaborative software has been developed for different purposes and for different end users than those encountered in C2W they provide only partial support for C2W tasks. Current tools were designed to facilitate collaboration itself rather than to provide collaborative support for individuals performing C2W tasks. This partial support can be problematic, since the primary function of the C2W team is not to transfer information, but rather to acquire, filter, assemble, and interpret it. Time and mental resources spent on the mechanics of the collaborative process therefore can reduce the human resources time, attention, memory available for gathering and processing information. Several of the tools evaluated in this report provided useful features for transferring information between team members. The ability to exchange documents from geographically distributed locations, and the option to use various asynchronous modes of communication that do not require the simultaneous attention of all participants were particularly attractive. Scheduling capability is especially critical for achieving coordination among the team members and others involved in planning and execution. This technology is highly developed in the business world and a plethora of useful tools is available for both individuals and workgroups. However, other aspects of coordination beyond scheduling, such as process monitoring, workload scheduling, and attention focusing are not adequately satisfied by available tools. Team needs for triggering mechanisms for sharing as well as aids for information assembly, information translation and correlation, and report generation are only partially met. These needs must be better satisfied before the collaborative tools may be regarded as meeting military team requirements.