Sub conclusion. The British effort in Helmand was marred from the outset by a lack of understanding and an under-resourced yet over-ambitious campaign plan. Moreover, the initial campaign plan was immediately discarded by the first rotation in Helmand as a result of the pressures posed by the local dynamics. The jettisoning of the initial campaign plan was not redressed, as each incoming brigade brought a distinct plan for its own rotation which precluded any continuity beyond six months. In part this haphazard approach was driven by the regimental cultures, which entailed nuanced distinctions. PJHQ was initially unable to impose a new, feasible campaign on the early TFH rotations. In part, this can be explained by the violent character of the operation in which the British forces struggled to control their enlarged area of operations. A first adaptation thus was the gradual yet consistent increase in troop 1522 See Farrell. Unwinnable, p. 344. 1523 See ISAF data IEDs in Helmand in British Army. Herrick Campaign Study, p.3-6-E_1. 1524 Ministry of Defence. IED events, p. 4. numbers, from 3,000 in 2006 up to 10,000 in 2009. This was made possible by the concurrent withdrawal from Iraq. Yet, this growth in troop levels was unable to hold cleared areas, let alone develop them. Moreover, as the British were unable to withdraw from peripheral districts, TFH had to repeatedly conduct new clearance operations. Beyond the futility of this approach, such operations had an adverse effect on escalating the violence in Helmand and impaired the perception of the international effort by its population. More resources were needed, but due to the growing unpopularity of the Afghanistan campaign, the cabinet was unwilling send further reinforcements, despite public requests for further reinforcements by generals and the Americans. A further fundamental flaw in the campaign was the lack of a working assessment process that informed commanders of the effect of their activities and could guide their plans. The Army did not adopt the informal initiative of the Tactical Conflict Analysis Framework; moreover, the later Helmand Monitoring and Evaluation Programme was predominantly used by the PRT and had little effect on the military operations. As such, this deficiency in understanding the effect of operations was not addressed. As the campaign made little lasting progress from 2006 to 2009, various adaptations were initiated to address deficiencies. These areas included training, doctrine, inte...
Sub conclusion. Issues with the QA practices This chapter has presented insights into quality aspects of ROS and ROS-Industrial communities gained through analysis of the ROS resources for the community. These insights can be used as the starting point for further investigations regarding quality in the ROS community, along with the implementation of quality improvement strategies. The analysis indicates that the community retains some of software engineering and industry practices and processes. However, there are challenges in the implementation and execution of these practices and processes as the next section will further detail. Software engineering quality models suggest two areas of practices, quality assurance and quality control. Quality assurance’s center of attention is processes and procedures. Quality control is the validation and verification of the product through a well-defined testing process and tools. ● Software Quality Assurance is a set of activities for ensuring quality in software engineering processes (that ultimately should result in quality software products). The activities establish and evaluate the processes that produce products (Xxxxxxx and Xxxx 1983).
