SBIR-STTR Award

As Army missions become more complex and diverse, the assignment of personnel to mission and staff teams has become more critical and challenging. Research and tools are needed to help commanders assign personnel to ensure optimal performance. The proposed effort will extend beyond existing staffing approaches to develop a more sophisticated staffing model that incorporates the influence of members’ KSAOs, team dynamics, and mission requirements to optimize team staffing decisions. Based on team composition research and using input from team staffing experts, we will develop an optimization algorithm to aid commanders in making personnel replacement decisions and provide a storyboard prototype of a Team Optimization Profile System tool. An option task will demonstrate the use of this algorithm within a specific domain (e.g., Special Forces). Future phases of the proposed work will include empirical validation of the optimization algorithm, increased use of computational modeling, and enhancements to ensure the tool is easy to use in field settings.

Benefits:
This program of research would result in the development of a tool to assist decision makers in optimizing personnel allocations within teams.

Keywords:
team staffing, personnel allocation, team effectiveness, decision aid

Existing research and tools do not provide ample solutions for composing highly effective teams under complex, real-world conditions. For example, leaders may need to balance individual candidate qualifications with current team requirements and capabilities, while factoring in constraints (e.g., candidate availability, missing information), and ensuring appropriate team chemistry, sometimes when forming or reconfiguring several teams at once. The Team Optimal Profile System (TOPS) has been proposed as a way to enable decision makers to make better and more rapid team composition decisions. In Phase I we gathered data from team staffing experts at 16 organizations, built a team staffing decision taxonomy, and designed the TOPS framework. In Phase II we will develop a process for customizing and populating the generic TOPS system for use in specific team domains. Second, we will seek to confirm the incremental validity and boundaries of the TOPS algorithm and extend and refine it using lab and field data. Third, we will design, develop, program, and populate a functional, customized prototype of the TOPS system for a specific type of team and team composition decision.

Keywords:
Team Staffing, Composition, Decision-Making, Effectiveness, Decision Aid, Team Effectiveness