Intelligence Analysis: Advanced

Open enrolment and in-house options available

Our Advanced Intelligence Analysis course looks to extend the toolkit provided in our Foundations program. To begin, you will be shown how to develop concrete plans and policy recommendations using prescriptive analytic techniques. Thereafter you will be shown how to manage and mitigate the cognitive challenges common to analytic work. Finally, using a series of guided exercises, you will be shown how to evaluate and improve the practice of analysis in your organisation, and how to identify and remove the roadblocks to effective reasoning.

There are currently no dates planned for this course. Register your interest for future dates or enquire about in-house options.

Course Outline

Prescriptive Analytic Techniques

Prescriptive Analysis

  • If / then analysis
  • Opportunity analysis
  • Feasibility analysis
  • Course of action analysis
  • Critical path analysis
  • Cost-benefit analysis
  • Roadmaps and solution pathways
  • Stakeholder analysis
  • Rolestorming

Challenge Analysis

Cognitive Challenges to Analytic Reasoning

  • A typology of cognitive pathologies
  • Perception, memory, and reasoning
  • Dealing with mindsets, blind spots and biases
  • Bias mitigation strategies

Challenge Analysis: Tools and Approaches

  • The key assumptions check
  • Structured self-critique
  • Pre-mortem analysis
  • Simplified and traditional red teaming
  • Team A / Team B method
  • Devil's advocacy

Enabling Analytic Success

Toward Effective Analysis in Organisations

  • The analytic function in an organisation
  • Factors determining analytic success
  • Common obstacles and roadblocks
  • Easy fixes vs larger scale change
  • Cultivating "Master Analysts"
  • The analyst with influence
  • The analyst as internal consultant
There are currently no dates planned for this course. Register your interest for future dates or enquire about in-house options.

Course Details

Who is this Course For?

This course is intended for experienced analysts and investigators, as well as for those working in strategic planning, policy planning and operational planning.

How You Benefit

On completion of this course you will have the ability to:

  • Develop recommendations using prescriptive methods of analysis
  • Understand the role of mindsets, biases and other cognitive pathologies in analytic reasoning
  • Challenge analytic conclusions in a manner that is rigorous and impartial
  • Improve the conduct of analysis in your organisation
  • Deploy a range of strategies to improve analytic culture and uncertainty management

What You Receive

  • A full set of course slides in PDF
  • An index of analytic techniques
  • Templates to support the application of the techniques taught
  • Six months of post-course support

Course Prerequisites

We recommend that participants first complete our Intelligence Analysis: Foundations course before undertaking this program. This is to ensure they understand our approach to analysis and reasoning.

Course Requirements

Please bring a Windows or Mac laptop with you. Please also ensure you have a Gmail account to access the course materials.