Competences and Keeping the Operator's Craft

All courses / AI Operations / Module 6 / Chapter 26

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

Describe the five groups of operator competences and how each is evidenced
Summarise what the cited studies measured about unaided performance after use of an automated aid, and in which domains
Plan a drill year with manual runs, a dark day and seeded-error drills that are scoped, authorised and stoppable
Design first rungs for early-career operators where AI now does the routine work

Key concepts

Five competence groups: Systems thinking, verification of an agent's proposals, manual operation, authorship of what the loop runs, and judgement under uncertainty. In the chapter's framework they are areas SY, VF, MO, AU and JU, each evidenced by a kind of exercise.
Manual-practice clause: A clause in the mandate of every agent that runs runbooks: every 90 days, with the agent off, an evidenced holder who did not write the runbook runs the manual form, and every missing step is recorded. When evidence lapses, the delegation is lowered.
Dark day: A scheduled period in which a defined workload is operated without the operations agents. It is scoped in writing, keeps the observer and the stop path in service, respects the Level 4 prohibitions and ends in an improvement.
Seeded-error drill: A drill that keeps the ability to check where a manual run keeps the ability to act: a known flaw is placed in a draft or proposal under authorisation, and the record shows whether review found it.
Attempt-first rule: An early-career practice in which the apprentice answers or diagnoses first and the assistant's proposal is opened afterwards, so that the new work teaches what the automated routine used to teach.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Interactive exercise 1 · Sort

Competences in the framework

Sort each capability into the area of the chapter's competence framework for operations to which it belongs.

Interactive exercise 2 · Scenario

The apprentice and the assistant

Apply the chapter's design for the early-career route.

Teaching plan

15 min	The teacher presents the five competence groups with the framework table and the rule that a competence is shown with and without the assistant.
15 min	Reading of the evidence: the theory from Bainbridge, the aviation measurement, recent studies in other domains and the customer-support study in which newer staff gained most, with what each does not show for operators.
20 min	Debate in four steps on whether automation will deskill operators, ending with the verdict and its labels.
10 min	Input on the early-career table: what junior work taught, where AI now does it and where it can be learned instead.
35 min	Exercise: participants plan a drill year with agents off.
10 min	Debrief with the competence record CMP-HM-OPS-007: what the manual run of 19 minutes exposed that the agent had made invisible.

Discussion

The manual run at Hansa Mutual found that a precondition was satisfied by the agent and the manual form said nothing about how a person does it. Which of your runbooks would fail the same way?
The customer-support study found that novices gained most from an assistant. How can an assistant help a newcomer learn without removing the tasks that taught the craft?
A competence record is personal data about judgement exercised. Who should be able to read it, and for what decisions may it not be used?

Written exercise

Exercise · 35 minutes

A drill year with the agents off

List the runbooks that agents or an orchestrator run on your estate and the recovery claims in the resilience register, or take Nordvik Region's three runbooks and the portal failover. Plan twelve months: a manual run of each runbook above Level 1 within every 90 days by an evidenced holder who did not write it; one dark day or game day with the agents off, with written scope, authorisation, the observer and stop path kept in service and a named person who can end it; seeded-error drills for reviewers; and a rotation or secondary seat for an early-career operator with a mentor. State what record each exercise produces and what happens to the delegation when evidence lapses.

Deliverable: A dated drill-year plan with manual runs, one agents-off exercise, seeded-error drills, an apprenticeship element, the record each produces and the consequence of lapsed evidence.

Your work

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

Who performs the manual run required by the manual-practice clause?
Show the answer
C. An evidenced holder who did not write the runbook, with the agent off
The run is by an evidenced holder and not by the author, because an author knows what the manual form leaves out. The agent is switched off and every missing step is recorded as a change.
What happens at Hansa Mutual when a window no longer has two evidenced holders?
Show the answer
A. The Level 3 classes of the agent drop to Level 2 for that window
The consequence falls on the delegation, not on a person: ROLE-HM-OPS-001 requires two evidenced holders per window, and a window that fails the rule drops the Level 3 classes of HM-OPS-001 to Level 2.
How does the chapter's verdict label the wholesale loss of the operator's craft?
Show the answer
D. Speculation
Decay of unaided performance is observable in other domains and expected in the cognitive part of manual recovery; a thinning entry route is expected where organisations let it; wholesale loss of the craft is speculation. None of the studies measured operators.