Resilience Aware Development-Exploration: An Exercise for Improving Attention to Work Systems Resilience During Technology Design

Efficiency, optimization, and improved capability are frequent goals of work system modernization initiatives. Resilience, defined as the ability of a system to adapt in response to diverse conditions and demands, including those that are rare or challenging, is also important. However, resilience is an abstract characteristic of systems. Whereas ways to improve efficiency tend to be easily recognized, ways to improve resilience are less obvious. Our goal was to make resilience visible and thereby enable developers of new technologies, concepts of operations, and policy to address and benefit the resilience of work system operations. To this end, we developed the Resilience-Aware Development—Exploration (RAD-E) that helps development teams think about how their new technology, concept of operations, or policy could impact work system resilience while educating development teams about the significance of work systems resilience and potential opportunities to strengthen the resilience of a work system.