Collaborative sense-making during simulated intelligence analysis exercises

Sense-making plays an important role in Intelligence Analysis, but can be difficult to study in situ. Thus, it is common to use training exercises to study this phenomenon. In this paper two versions of the same exercise are reported: one undertaken by participants at a conference and one undertaken by Military Intelligence officers. The behaviour of groups of analysts (experienced versus inexperienced) is considered in terms the Data / Frame model of Sense-making. The paper illustrates how Intelligence Analysis need not follow a linear process but often involves parallel and overlapping explorations of data, with multiple frames that are might be minimal and sketchy. The use of representations, such as link diagrams, provides a means of externalizing frames and it is suggested that this shifts reasoning from induction to deduction as the exercise progresses. Such a shift was seen more clearly in the behaviour of the Military Intelligence Officers who also spent more time developing and refining the diagrams to support the presentation of their findings.