Airbus Official Urges Major Pilot Training Changes

[PEI_3721]

Thoughts:-
Law of Coordinative Entropy. Coordination (automation) costs, continuously. The success of new technology depends on how the design affects the ability to manage the costs of coordinating activity and maintaining or repairing common ground. (Automation and training have to be balanced by their cost-benefit).

Law of Systems as Surrogates. Technology reflects the stances, agendas, and goals of those who design and deploy the technology. Designs, in turn, reflect the models and assumptions of distant parties about the actual difficulties in real operations. For this reason, design intent is usually far removed from the actual conditions in which technology is used, leading to costly gaps between these models of work and the “real work.” (Need to understand the assumptions and limitations of automation, work as imagine vs work as done - Training.)

Mr. Weasley’s Law. Based on their experiences, people develop unjustified trust and unjustified mistrust in their work system and its technology. As Mr. Weasley states in the Harry Potter series, “Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.” Understanding the intent of others, tracking and adjusting intent as situations change, and maintaining common ground across agents are critical in systems of interdependent agents, roles, and centers of control (continuous training, gaining experience).

The Law of the Kludge. Work systems always require workarounds, with resultant kludges that attempt to bridge the gap between the original design objectives and current realities or to reconcile conflicting goals among workers. Sets of algorithms, plans, and procedures cannot account for inevitable variability and ongoing changes in the world. Thus, someone has to act responsibly to help plans match situations in order to meet mission goals. (Our safety success is based on workarounds, but each differs with situation/context; train consistent workarounds).

The Law of Stretched Systems. Every system is stretched to operate at its capacity. As soon as there is some improvement or new technology, some stakeholders will identify the opportunities that the change makes possible to achieve some of their goals. The process of exploiting these opportunities will result in a new and greater intensity and tempo of activity as the work system moves toward the edge of its competency envelope. (In complex systems we tend to operate ever closer to the edge of safety – we, the industry, are the source of our problems).

The Law of Fluency. Well-adapted cognitive work occurs with a facility that belies the difficulty of resolving demands and balancing dilemmas. The adaptation process hides the factors and constraints that are being adapted to or around. (Training and skilled thinking will always suffer shortcomings). Uncovering the constraints that fluent performance solves, and therefore seeing the limits of or threats to fluency, requires a contrast across perspectives. (Seek different views, check work done vs work as imagined, and identify the sources of our success.)

The Reductive Tendency. Agents (pilots) at all scales develop and use simplifications, such as relying on decomposition to cope with interdependencies and decoupling to cope with dynamic interactions (aircraft in the operational environemt). Reductive understandings (simplifications) help workers manage what would otherwise be overwhelming complexity.

http://cmapsinternal.ihmc.us/rid%3D1...%2520Slice.pdf