Leveraging network-centric strategic goals in capabilities

The vision of network-centric operations is to increase operational capabilities through networked collaboration. NATO and its member nations state this vision in strategic documents at a very high level of abstraction. While suitable for giving an overall feel, current documentation renders the steps toward implementing those visions largely unsupported. We outline a method that is based on agile requirements engineering, for converting high-level strategic visions into capabilities whose forms lend themselves to incremental implementation. We illustrate the use of this method in two cases that deal with both operational capabilities and technical capabilities. We also show how the method enables one to prioritise which capabilities to develop first. We conclude that it is necessary to formulate and implement some form of explicit methodology with which to span the gap between strategic visions and an effective implementation of those visions.