Analytic Intelligence Production
How to craft intelligence to support operations and decision-making.
Course Description:
This course is designed to increase intelligence analysts’ ability to create clear, concise, relevant, and useful analytic intelligence products. In this course, we will explore framing topics for specific audiences, asking relevant focus questions, generating insightful analytic messages, and crafting storylines to carry these messages with confidence. Under instructor guidance participants will create a written analytic intelligence report and/or the slides and support material for an analytic intelligence briefing, then conduct structured peer reviews of these products. Participating analysts should already know their problem set and be familiar with their organisation’s format and standards, and arrive to the course with both a topic they plan to work on and the background research already completed.
At the end of this course, participants will be able to:
Focus their analytic topics on their clients’ needs
Ask intelligent, relevant questions to focus analysis
Compose clear, concise, relevant, and insightful analytic reports
Perform a structured review of analytic reports for clarity, logic, and relevance
Course Outline:
Day 1:
Analytic standards refresher
Conceptualizing analysis
Framing for your audience
Day 2:
Asking the right questions
Analysis to answer questions
Generating relevant analytic messages
Day 3:
Building a storyline
Intelligence writing vs academic and journalistic writing
Day 4:
The analytic review process
Structured self-review
Structured sample review
Day 5:
Structured peer review
Structured report evaluation
Who this course is for:
This course is ideal for intelligence analysts of all experience levels to develop their analytic production skills.
Course Prerequisites:
There are no prerequisites, but we strongly recommend taking our Tradecraft Standards of Intelligence Production course first. Participants should already have a good understanding the fundamentals of analytic intelligence tradecraft and tradecraft standards.
Duration:
In-Person Classroom Training: 5 Days, 7 hours of instruction per day*
Virtual/Remote Training: 5 days, 3.5 hours of instruction per day*
* We offer this class both as an in-person classroom event and as online, remote instruction. While the material and instruction is consistent between the two, we are able to offer practical exercises and personal instructor support to the training in-person that we are not able to offer remotely.
What you will receive at course completion:
A certificate of completion
A set of slide handouts in pdf form
A set of worksheets, checklists, and job aids
Six months post-course support to help implement training on-the-job