Case Studies of Efforts to Re-Engineer Cognitive Tasks

Abstract

This project addressed the questions of how to effect change, how to monitor the impact of change and adjust a system over time, and how to re-engineer a system so that it best supports the overall mission and goals. Based on a review of relevant literature and a series of interviews with people who have played an instrumental role in previous re-engineering efforts, we have gathered lessons learned from 20 different re-engineering efforts. The primary finding was that we were able to find examples of successful staffing reduction, but only when the goal was to improve performance by cutting unnecessary team members. We did not find examples where technology insertion was effective in reducing staff size.