Seems like forever ago that they were talking about making this.

It's too bad that the CO has to do the lion's share of the data entry, there should be a good training room guy (or two or three) to handle it. Seems to me that the trend is to place more and more staff-type tasks on the lowest level of command (company) without really providing the staff support for them. It probably would benefit both the company CO and the battalion S3 to have a dedicated training room-type Soldier to do this stuff (along with the awards, evaluations, qualifications, APFT, strength, etc tracking!).

Maybe this is a self correcting problem. If it's too much effort to update the info and it doesn't get done consistently, then the BN Cdr will revert back to the old methods of checking in on units like the weekly training meeting and visits in the field.

I'd say it depends on your boss. If he doesn't find the system a good method of planning and tracking training, then he probably won't insist you take up too much time on it. The problem will be when you don't, you'll have a major sitting in the S3 shop with nothing to do other than hammer you for updates.

In my ten years in the Army, I've seen a huge move toward micromanagement by leaders -- probably party because of email and Blackberries and a constant flow of information.

Brigade commanders now micromanage minor misconduct by Soldiers. Get a DUI, and the CG knows about it within 24 hours. Show up on the blotter and the CG will ask the battalion commander what the plan is for this Soldier. The attitude starts at the top and will now only reinforce itself as the current company commanders, who grow up in a culture of micromanagement, rise through the ranks.

TK is spot on with the first comment, if the CO is doing it, he has larger problems, entering stuff into DTMS is a duty a SPC or SGT in the training room can do.
DTMS is not about micro management, however it is an effective tool for higher level HQ to manage and check on subordinates, believe it or not, that last TLP of Supervision does not stop at the Platoon Leader. DTMS allows a CG, BDE Commander, whatever to look at what is going on around post, and to observe his Soldiers in training.
DTMS does not replace the training meeting, you still need to develop plans with your staff/NCOs and so forth.
An example...if a company or battalion schedules a M4 range, the CG wants to observe that Company, or observe a range, his staff can simply look into DTMS and see who is on and when. Heaven forbid you are not on the range when you scheduled it, as range time is a sought after event.
It amazes me how everyone will talk about leadership, and the need to supervise, and see your Soldiers, and how when things go wrong, its the fault of leadership at the top, but the moment someone checks on you, it's micromanagement.

Rifle Company Commander
Listen to SOLDIERSDIARY, learn how to delegate. You definitely need to get your PL/PSGs working a little in DTMS.

PowerPoint looks great (Horse/Pony Blanket) but really has no functionality, it is no "smarter" than a butcher board. Try rolling up 60 Co PPs at Div level. I talked to the Div Master Scheduler at 101st/Ft Campbell (probably not a coveted job) he was working with 5-6 calendars (lots of PP horse blankets) that didn't talk to each other, his job was to "swivel chair" data back and forth between "calendars" that have no calendar functions or any capability to share data.

If you only use DTMS for one thing, use it for the Task Data Base! Does PP have all the Combined Arms Tng Strategies, Collective and Individual Tasks where you can link them to your tng events? I think we need to bite bullet and work softcopy more instead of trying to take boatloads of data in a tng management system and turning it into PP for a Tng Meeting. We need to do tng meetings with a big screen (or use Defense Connect Online for Reserve Component guys who are spread out over half of Nebraska) we may need a CO/Bat/Trp Kiosk where your training schedule is softcopy and your soldiers can drill down into events and see all the OPORDS, MOIs, STX Lanes, Supporting Tasks etc.... You can't do that with paper or PP.

Following the last two large conflicts the army sought to 'regain' control after pushing decision-making authority down to the company/platoon/squad level where war is actually fought. Whether this was a conscious decision or merely human nature is open for discussion.

Following Vietnam and lasting well into the mid-1980s there was a 'zero defects' approach to leadership. This particularly showed itself in training management, with a preposterous cross-referencing process (including giant training manuals you had to lug around) to ensure compliance with task, condition and standard. Nothing wrong with T/C/S, but everything was wrong with the time consuming and mostly empty process of documention. As the decade wore on my sense was that experience at NTC pushed aside this top-down nonsense and a much more soldier-centered process, exemplified by the AAR, took its place.

Then came Desert Shield and Storm, with the army operating like it was rolling across the sands of Ft Irwin. I noticed in the immediate aftermath of that war another strong push to again take back initiative from junior leaders. This is where the full day quarterly training briefing came into vogue. As a company commander I spend countless days working on my powerpoint slides that minutely detailed the my unit, from vehicle maintenance to the status of Private Smith's shin splints and how many days he had been on profile. Leadership by powerpoint became the norm. Your career at times rested on the interpretation of a slide you made at two in the morning after a full day of real training.

So, with two wars winding down and the army again facing constraining resources in a more training, rather than deployment-oriented training cycle, it is not too surprising that the powers-to-be feel the instinctive need to peer in to Sergeant Jones' squad to see if they have completed their NBC training for the quarter. The same SGT Jones who took his squad into some unremembered village last fall to negotiate the building of a school and wound up calling air support and negotiating a fighting withdrawl.

What's next, evaluating NCOs based on how many college courses they have taken rather than their combat experience over three deployments?

The topic is training management not quite the same as warfighting, in fact in last 10 years training management has been centralized and tied completely to deployment. During the OPTEMPO of the the last decade "IRAQFORGEN" Training for deployments (maybe) culminating in MRE/MRX has been very centralized. There has been no "white space" on calendars for Cos, not much for the Bns. Now with OPTEMPO slowing a little and Army working towards a real ARFORGEN cycle (with dwell time and training for Full Spectrum Ops) training management will be more decentralized.

Many training managers have not read FM 7-0 "Training for Full Spectrum Operations", or AR 350-1 "Tng and Ldr Dev" (and don't know what ATN or CATS are). Now that they are going to be in charge (this includes Bns and BDEs!) of planning, prepping, and executing their own training, they need to break out the "how to" in Army Training Network, FM 7-0, and AR 350-1. They need to "break into" DTMS and see what is in there that is useful to them. Everything that used to be (and much more) in ARTEP-MTPs is now in Combined Arms Tng Strategies on DTMS and ATN.

compared to DTS.....now that is some PTSD inducing stuff there (Defense Travel System for the unitiated).

Concur with most of the comments here - but just realize again your BN CDR is being asked for this same crap - (s)he has no more choice in the matter than you do. Sadly.

Take something that all good units do: planning and tracking training, and create a standard interface that makes their data available to higher commanders and staffs. Furthermore, create an electronic training record for each Soldier that follows them throughout their career. Unfortunately the interface is miserable and results in a huge data entry workload and outputs that are generally worse than what a reasonably competent unit could generate internally.

I was deployed when the system was being rolled out and left command before my brigade decided to fully implement it and so have only a limited experience with the system. My impressions after using it were all negative but I remain positive about its potential. The writer should not be advocating dropping the program. The Army is far behind in fully implement ing a system like this. We expect the brigade TOC to monitor SGT Smith’s convoy, and 40 others, in real time on the battle field. We built interoperable systems that transfer data from the squad through the chain to the BDE and beyond in a tactical environment but for some reason can’t do the same with very basic training data.

I think this writer will get a lot of support from the readers who often call for reducing ‘bloated’ staffs at all levels. Unfortunately they will be backing the wrong horse. The Army will never be able to trim staff requirements if it doesn’t invest in technologies that eliminate staff work. Staffs are full of people who combine and streamline information, like BEARCAT’s division scheduler. If DTMS worked that guy might be free to do something useful. The Army needs technology that makes it ‘flatter’ that will mean systems that open company level data up to direct division level analysis.

The writer does have the wrong mindset regarding data sharing and micromanagement. Your Soldier’s PT scores and weapons qualifications are your battalion commander’s business and it is the company commander’s duty to keep him informed. You can not just hand the BC a training calendar and walk away. The company commander needs to demonstrate results to the BC, and to himself and his subordinates. The BC should ask why PVT Jones failed his PT test and his CO should be able to give an answer. He should also be able to demonstrate how his company program (PT, weapons training, squad stakes, etc.) is improving the unit.

(What would be really fabulous is a system that let PVT Jones’ CO know, the day he walked into the company, that the Soldier hadn’t even taken a PT test in years because he was ridding profiles. I think a shrinking Army badly needs a system like that.)

I have been a Company Commander twice.

In my first Command, we didn't use DTMS. There was a seperate spread sheet, PowerPoint slide, report format, or out-dated GARSOP report for EVERYTHING. As a Commander, I spent most of my time trying to find the "right" format to report information.

Even something as simple as APFT scores can be reported dozens of different ways. The format for the Battalion QTB slide is different from the weekly Command & Staff. My leaders don't have the same info in their individual leader books. It makes a data call a nightmare.

In my second Command, we used DTMS like religion. There was only ONE answer, and that's what was in DTMS. It drove all of our slide presentations, leader books, reports and "fill in the blank" SOP information. Of course you could make your own products, but the data all came from one source.

What was best is when there would be an odd presentation that wasn't linked to DTMS (for higher than Brigade usualy), the info was already there and easily transcribed. No going between different presentations and figuring out what the difference was.

It also made training easier since all of the Warrior Tasks, METL tasks, and even some of the old ARTEP stuff was loaded in there. Once you scheduled an event, you got the "by the book" answer with Task, Conditions, Standards able to be printed with one click. MUCH better than NCOs fighting about how they did it years ago back in the day.

Yes, it is painful to get started. Yes, you have to keep up with it. Yes, it takes away some of the "fudge factor" and keeps you more honest than you might want to be.

But it is one hell of a lot better than every E6 with an email address and a mandate from the CSM creating their own format that nobody understands.

I have a lot of issues with DTMS (mostly technical), but I'll echo the complaint about micromanagement.

Attitudes towards DTMS seem to be somewhat more positive among those who grew up in the 90s-era Army, and a lot more negative among GWOT-era officers.

Before we had a war to focus our attention on real training objectives, people simply made them up. They looked at likely missions, and hashed out meticulous training plans. Remember the days of thorough METL crosswalks, quarterly training guidance, six week training calendars, and ten step training models? All those things that used to be in the training manuals that few ever had the time to do during the hectic ARFORGEN cycle. We spent a lot more time talking about training than we actually DID training.

I think this may also cause the Army's leadership to realize that there are far too many mandatory training requirements placed on troops. The amount of training days it takes to train all annual training requirements exceeds the number of training days in a year.

Despite this, I feel the Army's leadership will insist that we meticulously track the number of soldiers who have completed (insert hot-button political item), and give less attention to the things that actually matter.

The CSA study group was right--we need to take a red pen to AR 350-1. What do we really need to train each year? Let commanders decide the rest. That's why we made them commanders.

This is also, I might add, a topic I've been very interested in. How does information technology affect leadership? Any thoughts as to where to start reading about how day to day office communication worked in the 50s and 60s?

Now that I have experience as a Training/Ops Chief at a regimental level command, I get to see where all this craziness comes from.

Just think about how many people you have working on training records instead of training in their MOS. 1-2 at the platoon level, then another 1-2 at the company, who are combining the platoon numbers and no doubt correcting their mistakes. Now the companies forward it to Battalion, where the S-3 shop has 2-3 people inputting the info or checking the accuracy/omissions of the subordinate unit submissions. Then regiment is doing the same and forwarding higher. By the time you are done, it has taken the efforts of 20 people to show the CG that LCpl Binotz attended Level 1 DADT training.

And woe be to the S-3 who forwards a spreadsheet up the chain of command that lists a Marine as IHCA-In Hands of Civilian Authorities-which causes SgtsMajs at all levels to go high and to the right, since they were never notified, until someone realizes it was a typo. ;-(

On the other hand, working in Training seems to be a great way to gain face time with your commander and have measurable accomplishments. It seems that 75% of the meritorious promotion or NCO of the quarter packages I see are for someone's Training NCO. Good for them, not so fair to the mechs out busting their knuckles, or the grunts humping hills.

I served 26 years. There have been some very valid points addressed. Bottom line is each units make up of personell is different regardless of what the MTOE states. I have witnessed and seen at all levels, the ability of BDE CO/CSM, BN CO/CSM as well as company commanders and 1SG make it all look very good on paper in the form of Excel, PP, and DTMS. Bottom line is it's up to the command enviroment to set the tone and take responsibility in training. If their greatest concern is percentages and pretty slides Soldiers will recognize this, and will be less than enthusiastic about training. Too many leaders (officer as well as enlisted) spend way to much time behind the computer or in meetings to effetively lead. Army times just did a story on NCO's leaving service because of Bad Leaders. In my humble opinion its all related. I know it's scary outside the office, and you might miss a critical email requesting an updated FRG roster, but get out and LEAD!

Yep, I'm the guy that's managing DTMS for the Army. First, great discussion
- and I'm glad to see we have a few out there that defend DTMS. I've been
in this job about a year - came off a couple of deployments before that in
07 and 09-10. Been a company commander and S3 - so I understand the
challenges with just getting the job done. A significant portion of this
thread deals with how DTMS, the tool, is used by leaders. Like any tool,
there exists the possibility of it being misused. The dialogue regarding
the responsibility of commanders and leaders at all levels to supervise and
check training could be a complete discussion on its own. But I want to try
and address some of the specifics regarding DTMS. I'll try to keep this
succinct, but I want to share a view from my cubicle at the end of a
hundred-year old building....

1. Performance. DTMS has been slow - too slow for training NCOs to get the job done; they have to go home to make it work faster off the Army network. We know that's unacceptable. It's recently gotten faster with some changes we've made. We're moving the servers to get much more bandwidth and a higher footing on the Army network - we expect this to speed things up, but we don't know what it will look like at each installation. I was just at Ft. Hood this week demonstrating DTMS to Bn Cdrs and it was humming - at 1500 in the afternoon.

2. User knowledge. Acknowledge DTMS is not an intuitive system and we're
working to improve that. A huge challenge we see is that when it comes to
DTMS, units are working hard but not necessarily smart - we need to better
educate our users on the capabilities (and limitations) of the tool so they
can maximize its use and performance. I echo the importance of delegation
of data entry when possible - but I also know that not too many PLTs have
computers in their areas. There are functions that allow you to "batch"
record training completion rather than entering Soldier data one by one.
Combined Arms Training Strategies (CATS) are great tools to help you
understand the tasks for which your unit was designed and will help you
develop a method to train those tasks (as in STT, FTX, COMMEX, TEWT, LFX,
range). When we talk to commanders, CSMs, 1SGs, and users we find many of their complaints can be resolved by showing them how it can be done more easily in DTMS.

3. Functionality. DTMS isn't the end all be all (yet). I totally agree
with the comment about the exporting of data in a usable form. We're
developing the capability to make that better and getting more functions to
have that ability. Reporting has been one of our biggest challenges. I've
told my team that the data isn't much good unless it's in a form that a
commander can use - should see a noticeable difference in the next 6 months.

4. DTMS Help. Nearly every installation has a DTMS manager/master trainer
and many have several. I strongly urge you to find those folks and get them
to help. Failing that, I have a team of 9 guys that get paid to answer your
phone calls and emails (and travel all over the world to train DTMS
users/master trainers). You can reach them at 913-684-2700 or email them
at: dtmstc@conus.army.mil.

Finally, we welcome these kinds of comments and discussions. We value
feedback from users, both on the functionality of the system itself, and on
how it is being used by units. We are committed to providing the best
training management system possible to the Army and appreciate those who work with the system and provide input to help us meet that goal.

The other day, I found that my Walmart was out of our favorite dog food. A woman appeared to be taking inventory with a handheld computer and swiping technology. I asked her when the dog food would be restocked. I thought thatr she would tell me that we get deliveries on Tuesdays, or words to that effect. Instead, she told me exactly when it would be back on the shelf by querying her handheld! OK, Walmart has been developing that system for over 20 years.

I also know something about Army and FAA/DOT IT contracting procedure and contracting - it ain't easy. But, I have an idea what the ideal would be. Allot could be achieved with the swiping of smart cards. Soldiers' attendance and profiles, etc. could be entered when the event occurs or the profile is authorized by a doctor. Im pretty sure that some supply functions occur this way, but I've been out too long. DTMS should also function as a requirements model. If you are taking a unit to the range for a particular purpose, the ammo should automatically be requisitioned and ready to be drawn the morning or afternoon of.

In a future world, your training and ops planning software would have thew same interface. There are certain ops that begin as "canned" functions. The software would remind you of "be prepareds" and basic loads, etc. Equipment maintenance and readiness would be integrated.

If anything is cheap, its computers. There is really no reason why the relevant NCOs shouldn't have the simple computers they need - unless you go ruggedized and secure - not needed for training of conventional units in garrison.

The program chief is right. It is all in how the system is used by your superiors. Micro-management is not inherent to the system - it's people. Data is one thing, but leadership through human contact is key. DTMS may improve leadership but nothing replaces seeing and hearing.

A fellow named An Wang came up with "creative leadership by wandering." He would wander his company and talk to anyone and thereby get ideas. We do it a little differently in the military, but nothing prevent a general or field grade officer from driving out to the ranges and just talk to units that happen to be there. Of course, they might want to see units with problems with greater frequency.

Lastly, we always talk about training as we fight. I would hope that could extend to our software systems as well. It seems that as soon as the balloon goes up, we suddenly have to find new ways of coping with the new crisis.

"nothing prevents a general or field grade officer from driving out to the ranges and just talk to units that happen to be there" -->yes, but DTMS and similar data pull systems might prevent the unit from driving out to the training area to begin with..

The "delegation" of dtms to an lieutenant or NCO subordinate only gets a commander so far.. a leader is still pulled away from training during a work day that already has too few hours in it (see: plenty of references in this thread about less days in the year than what is required to meet 350-1 requirements). Your slow-speed soldiers will most likely not do it correctly because the DTMS website is completely counter-intuitive (see: DTMS CHIEF comments), and your high-speed soldiers should be doing high-speed combat training, not typing.

Line units do not log a helluva lot of field time compared with what you'd expect considering the huge civilian/logistical tail we possess. I remember hearing stories in Germany of guys spending significant amount of time in the field in the pre-computer age and becoming truly expert in their MOS. The war of terror is challenge to training people to become experts during short ARFORGEN cycles, but the dtms stuff is just self-inflicted additional friction against achieving the goal of expert squads and platoons. Surely someone on this blog can validate whether or not units had more time to become expert back then or more time now?? If this answer is the latter, then maybe all this data pull is worth it...and I better start digging into my dtms guy.

I'd have very little trouble removing a squad leader and some soldiers from a squad to be the company intel team (and let fires do fires), because I know I am getting a huge return on investment. But its a lot harder for me to justify to myself sticking a solid infantry NCO behind a computer and putting him in charge of data management when that doesn't seem to have any return on investment for our unit. Remember, the standard setup for a company CP is already stretched thin processing mountains of routine personnel actions and trying to participate in field exercises.....because I take my CP to the field every chance I get.

If DTMS discipline will have a good return on investment for my unit and/or the Army, then why was that not mentioned by DTMS CHIEF? His defense of the system (with all due respect Sir) was limited to: A. as a tool, it is misused a lot 1. it is slow, but seems to be getting faster 2. it has a bad interface, but we'll teach you how to use it 3. It is not the end-all-be-all data collection system 4. there is a 9-person help-line.

@RVN SF VET
Ordering new men and specialized military equipment is a little more complicated than re-ordering generic dog food. Many nuances are involved. Many personalities are involved. Various missions are involved. Tough judgement calls are involved. DTMS is definitely becoming involved, and I think the jury's still out on where this takes us. The smart card concept sounds good, but we haven't even gotten that down for simple algorithm stuff like Land Warrior graphics, etc. The LW features of a proposed smart phone system sound much simpler than a dtms system that automatically sorts unit-relevant data to all parties involved with just the right touch of subjective analysis....yet we can't even get the simple video-based LW system into the hands of a company. That kind of technology could really transform some aspects of company-level tactics, but dtms data sharing just seems like data collection for the sake of data collection.

"Attitudes towards DTMS seem to be somewhat more positive among those who grew up in the 90s-era Army, and a lot more negative among GWOT-era officers" ---> Y'all have read the infamous 10th MTN 90s vs. GWOT REFRAD essay, right? Starbuck might have stumbled upon the hidden door leading to the answer.. Although some of the anti-dtms comments seem to be made by 90s officers.. hate to insinuate that sort of us-vs-them attitude, but there are some valid arguments made in the above referenced REFRAD essay, but much of the essay is just whining too.

Leadership by wandering is good. A must. Leadership requires constant practice and time to wonder, and the data pull doesn't seem to be helping that goal. Luckily my bn & bde commander "wander" out to training a lot and my unit gets good feedback from that. I get to as well. My 1SG makes it out as much as he can, but he throws himself on the c-wire obstacle of data pull for me, so that takes him out of the fight a lot. He delegates a lot of stuff to the PSGs too, but they have crazy taskings they are trying to stay on top of too. My CoC hasn' seemed to make dtms such a big priority, and i think that is a good thing.. If they can effectively manage and lead their units without relying on the dtms crutch, then kudos to them.

Sir, if you read this don't ramp up dtms now ;-) I think websites like this are healthy for the Army, but I should probably start logging into this site as a call-sign....

After using them for 4 years on active duty, I agree that they are 5 years behind the curve of private websites. I'm curious who it is that develop these sites.

First, how dare you suggest that George eats "generic dog food"? He demands and gets Purina One Lamb & Rice or he gets a rash. OK, salmon dog food works too, but his breath!

My point was that she was swiping data for inventory/reorder purposes and yet she could wirelessly query the database as to when a particular item would be on the shelf - that's thinking outside the box. They could have kept the software much more restrictive. BTW, although it is not perfect, the Walmart Executive Information System (EIS) stores more data than all the data on the Internet (source: the New York Times.) Although EIS is an old term, it is in fact what DTMS is attempting. One way to get there is to make input as easy as possible.

There are two factors which affect all systems development and software in particular: the contract/award process and the rapid change of technology. The latter is the easiest to grasp - just look at how fast hardware and software, to a lesser extent, evolve. There's a new Java or C++ version several times a year. At a point in time, some officers and civilian employees sit down to write a spec. Many of them don't know squat about the SOTA of software. One or two nerds (usually young officers) want to have the spec include nascent software developments.

The best approach is to develop the requirements only using experienced NCO and officer trainers. Today, it isn't very hard to get guys with combat experience as well. They articulate how things are done now and what they would like to see. Then the "pull folks" describe what they want to see. If it stopped there for Phase I and award and development followed, things might be cool. But as development progresses, people add things on.

Then, they should go out with a Request For Proposal (RFP) where industry has the opportunity to suggest what they can do. Then, the requirements are refined into a competitive contract or RFQ. See: http://tinyurl.com/3fm628u

The contracting office may or may not impose burdensome restrictions on how specific the requirements can be about operating systems (OS) and hardware comparability requirements. Ideally, the software is built to run on an Army-wide system with a common local front-end (distributed processing.) This can have significant bandwidth impacts.

Then, a panel must determine the winning bid. How well-qualified are the members of the panel? What criteria do they use? Has someone or everyone low-balled their bid? This is a point when it can be wise to hand the task over to a competent non-profit like MITRE Corporation (no relation) to get the best qualified people to evaluate the technical aspects. Highly qualified government personnel are usually involved in other kinds of tasks. A consumer panel of trainers should have an evaluative role.

By now, you should get the impression that significant time has passed. Meanwhile someone at a place like Oracle has asked why their relational database can't be used - it's simple! Hah!

In the game of government contracting you may or may not get a competent, honest contractor. That contractor, depending upon the rates bid, may or may not have been able to hire elegant programmers. No, they were not already on staff. In fact, the team is brought together for this specific program. Remember, during the period of development, there will be significant turnover on both sides of the contract. This can have significant impact on the quality of the product. Oh, and the general officers change - heaven help us.

As the "Chief" suggests, the software is not static and the contractor enters a maintenance/improvement mode when it is beta-fielded and fielded throughout the service. Then there is the issue of operator training. This is not a fairytale as I have gone through this as an officer/COTR, contractor, and third-party evaluator. At least I was smart enough to get NCOs involved at the beginning.

This process is made more difficult because the human interface is the most important and complex factor. I did learn not to underestimate the abilities of the experienced training NCO. It was an NCO who showed the scientists and me how to make our training scheduling program into a requirements model. BTW, we terrified FORSCOM and TRADOC when we demonstrated the resources required to match the requirements. FORSCOM didn't have enough ammo in their budget to meet FORSCOM requirements! Sounds like the problem of not enough training days in the calendar year.

Lastly, the program we created was done with Penn State Department of Industrial Engineering at very low cost and we used remote minis as our servers. Within a year, several colonels tried to tell their superiors that they had developed the program at their installations. Two contractors: one was a retired LTC masquerading as a Disadvantaged Business and the other was a really big defense contractor, tried to sell this government-owned program to DCSPER, among others. Two Army JAG Captains resigned when the US Attorney declined to prosecute the LTC. It seems you need to be screwing the government for more than 10 million before it is worthwhile to prosecute. Good to know!

So, when you criticize something like DTMS, just think what it took to get this far.

Looks like you struck a nerve with this one, Tom and RCCO. Glad to see the Navy isn't the only one with useless databases. Well, not glad to see.....

BEARCAT, SOLDIERS DIARY,
When I said "I do 50% of the inputting", I meant in regards to training schedules.  DTMS is an outdated, archaic, slow website that produces garbage for an actual functional training calendar.  I don't ever input any of the "statistical" data.  And I don't make it much of a priority for my Training Room NCO either (because he and his helpers are already swamped).  The DTMS heat has been turning up lately, so that might change soon.  I still think it will be a complete waste of time for whoever does end up inputting statistical training data into DTMS.

I don't care if a general chooses to "supervise" my training...I'd welcome it.  I don't mind if a general wants to supervise my units readiness either.  But I would tell any general that using DTMS to facilitate that supervision would be a waste of his time.  He/she has to personally get out in the field and SEE for his/herself how a unit is doing...not rely on DTMS to do it for him/her.

DTMS CHIEF,
You say that DTMS will help company commanders better understand training objectives and all the sub tasks involved with training?  Really?  Then why did I go to the career course?  Or better yet, why put a commissioned Infantry officer in charge of developing squad training?  I develop training based on my professional education and experience and from collaborative planning sessions with my PL/PSG/SLs.  If we need to double check the ARTEP for something, fine, but the last thing I would do is scrub some DTMS printout to make sure I've captured all the (probably outdated) ARTEP steps.

You say it can track mandatory training, among other things.  Who should judge what is mandatory training? A computer database?? This profession cannot be boiled down to stats and regulated training on a database.  I agree it can do all those things you listed very well (if you can learn how to use it), but those functions are just not needed IMO.  

Another comment (from RVN SF VET) suggested DTMS would be able to connect land/ammo forecasting to streamline delivery/pickup.  Pipe dream.  Companies routinely encounter changing situations and personnel requirement,s and therefore ammo allocations are routinely re-calculated to different companies within the battalion in order to maximize the ammo resources.  This isn't just a matter of re-stocking shelves.

This whole "micromanagement" idea brings up another idea:  instead of focusing on suicide prevention classes, heat casualty classes, equal opportunity classes, victim advocate classes, physical readiness training classes (PRT), motorcycle madness classes, etc, etc, units should just TRAIN more.  History is full of examples of a new commander stepping in, focusing on just "getting out in the field" and moral/effectiveness of the unit going up.  The problem is, most commanders (CO, BN, BDE) feel thwarted in doing so except for a precious few weeks every quarter.  Soldiers might take a little more pride in themselves and their profession if they weren't treated like children and instead treated like soldiers that NEED to be on the field training.  Then when they get out of the field, hold them accountable like the adults they are and stop wasting their time doing "under the oak tree counseling" and vehicle inspections or ridiculous RED cycle taskings.  Quick deployment timelines don't help, but maybe a BDE would be able to go to the field as a BDE more than once/twice before deployment if they just said damn the nonsense.

The army is FULL of talented officers and NCOs that "make it happen" and ensure we are trained as best we can before deploying, but we accomplish it despite the micromanagement, not because of it.

Either put green-suiters in charge of developing an Excel or Access database or stop with all the madness.  It's obvious that the contractors behind such things like DTMS have a vested interest in the product never being 100% correct, or they'd lose out on contracted support/assistance.

On a tangential note, unions seemed to have taken over the ranges of the Army, and this is not a good thing either IMO.  Instead of being able to order a green-suitor to jump out his 4th point of contact and change a targetry system (or having a private company jump out of THEIR 4th point of contact on a moments notice), we are reduced to settling for rules like "range control needs minimum three days notice before you can do a range recon" or "range control can't let you occupy that range early simply because you didn't let us know 3 days ahead of time", etc, etc.  You've got workers dictating terms to the govt...crazy.

Most brigade headquarters are extremely bloated and unwieldy, so let them play with stats.  Companies cannot do it effectively without sacrificing lots of valuable training time.  When soldiers start feeling that training is not the most important thing, they start doing stupid stuff.  Another alternative is give companies a couple extra admin soldiers to do it right.  The data collection aspect of DTMS has potential as a database of soldier stats, but not as is.  And it certainly has no potential as a training calendar solution.  Training calendars should be between a commander and his boss, not between a commander and the entire chain up to the POTUS.

BEARCAT, HUNTER,
totally agree that PLs should plan training, and they do in my unit. But I don't expect PLs to brief ME on what my company is doing over the next 6 weeks. That's what I make a training calendar for. And I don't need a super-sexy slide deck to do so. The training calendars that DTMS spits out are just not very uccecpatable (in my mind) when it comes to easily conveying what is going out 6 weeks out. Too much paper, doesn't properly depict event over time and space, etc (things that make it easier for PSG/SLs to do TLPs from).

Trust me, we don't stay all night at my company either. Refuse to. The DTMS stuff is giving me heartache mostly as a matter of principle and also because I am forced to deal with it for hours each week.

I have flat out disregarded FRAGO instructions to ensue everything in DTMS has a location and FM/TM reference and a few other instructions because I refuse to take away more time from my NCOs ad thereby getting us into a "stay past 1800hr" type of organization. DTMS is just the straw that is about to break this camel's back as far as pointless data hoarding that the Army is taking part of. The day I sent the email to Tom, I had read a FRAGO entry that reminded everyone that even morning formations need an FM referece annotated. (as well as location.....and location entry requires going through 5 more slow clicks of the mouse too.....super slow program). This stuff adds up, as I said. Taken inisolation, none of it sounds too demanding.

Email debating can be rather frustrating :) We will have to continue this in person sometime. I would wager that if either of you actually had to deal with DTMS right now in my shoes you would think it a 80% waste of time and energy. Is DTMS destroying my ability to train my company and keep decent work hours? Not yet. Is DTMS a symptom of a micromanagement culture that is spiraling out of control? I think you know what I think:)

Thanks for the encouragement though. I will honestly try to tackle the "data" side of DTMS better/smarter, but I will keep side-stepping the ridiculous calendar part of it out of principle until my CoC makes me change my mind. It might be, as Hunter said in an earlier comment, out of their hands too, sadly.

I should not have said I am "forced" to deal with it. I could delegate 100% of the training calendar stuff (the only part of DTMS I allow myself to do part of myself) but I'd spend more time dealing with it than if I just input it in myself. I should try to make my training room step up to this task. They probably can as you point out. They already input the rough draft version each week, but I end up inputting all the inevitable corrections that come downed a result of changing BN/BDE calendars. I just have a hard time making a soldier do something that I know in my heart of hearts is an absurd waste of time. It's easier and faster when I input the updates myself, but if I force them to do it, they'll get better at it...until they rotate out of the training room and then the whole learning curve starts over:)

I do have this one request that I wanted to post to the larger community. Can we start standardizing Army reporting with AKO usernames? Every Soldier (and I assume its the same in the other services) now has a distinct username. As a 1SG, if i could have just joined multiple rosters together by joining them at the AKO username column, i could have combined and automated so many repeating reports and rosters. (that may have changed in the last two years.)

Quit sending me to all of these training programs to learn multiple reporting systems from multiple tracking tools. Let me spend all of that time by focusing one data tool, Excel. Let me download all 4-500? available data columns from DTMS. The canned reports from DTMS have value, but they can't meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands of reporting entitites within the Army. I could spend some startup time to build summary worksheets (and share through the NCO Backchannel), and then every Friday afternoon one of my Soldiers can spend 20 minutes performing a skill level 1 task and downloading a fresh pile of data.

I agree with everyone else about difficulties inherent in the training calendar builder.