Article Preview
TopIntroduction
People and organizations increasingly need to handle irregular phenomena: a fact or event that happens or exists and is observed, but an understanding of what will occur during its existence is not clear in advance, being best explained only retrospectively (Merriam-Webster, 2021; Oxford, 2021; Taleb, 2007). These phenomena are usually found in complex, dynamic, and unpredictable environments, such as education, healthcare, lawsuits, and emergency management, and dealing with them is challenging.
Teams act over 3 phases when handling irregular phenomena: planning, enactment, and evaluation. During planning, the planning team devises a plan using existing premises and variables to design procedures and identify resources that, if followed and applied, should make the irregular phenomenon evolve into an expected situation (Alexander, 2016; Canton, 2019; Haddow et al., 2020; Phillips et al., 2016, Penadés et al. 2011; Shan et al., 2012). During enactment, the response team identifies the suitable procedures of the plan, depending on what is happening, and sequentially performs them until achieving the goal (Alexander, 2016; Baroni et al., 2014; Barthe-Delanoë et al., 2018; Carvalho et al., 2015; Comes et al., 2012; Glarum & Adrianopoli, 2019; Haddow et al., 2020; Phillips et al., 2016, Shan et al., 2012). Finally, during evaluation, the planning team collects information arising from the plan enactment to gain knowledge about the irregular phenomenon and uses successes and failures for the plan evolution, thereby providing a more suitable plan to deal with future phenomena (Canton, 2019; Haddow et al., 2020; Phillips et al., 2016).
However, plan application is not always straightforward, and adapting to unforeseen situations becomes a task often performed in irregular phenomena (Baroni et al., 2014; Barthe-Delanoë et al., 2018; Böhringer, 2010; Carvalho et al., 2015; Cordeiro et al., 2015; Piccione & Pellegrini, 2020; Quiroz-Palma et al., 2020). Teams deal with uncertainty and unpredictability, with each action leading to several alternatives to handle. There is also pressure to make quick and critical decisions since the situations faced may be life-threatening and need immediate attention. Moreover, decisions are often made with incomplete information, bearing impacts on the phenomena response. Furthermore, any change requires teams to reevaluate the selected procedures (Alexander, 2016; Feng et al., 2016; Glarum & Adrianopoli, 2019; Lakshmanan et al., 2012; Ni et al., 2020; Ruiz-Martin et al., 2020; Smetana & Karda, 2019). Thus, the existing plan may become inadequate to be precisely applied, thus creating a need to make decisions and perform runtime adjustments.
The present research focuses on the plan enactment phase on the basis that there could be failures in diagnosing unforeseen situations and adjusting previously developed plans at runtime. A need to provide teams with information and tools that allows the adaptation of prior developed plans during their application in irregular phenomena is observed. They should be able to identify when the phenomena evolution does not match the expected one, to diagnose the plan adequacy to handle the observed evolution, and, if necessary, to adjust the plan to address the identified problems.