Thanks for writing this post. CTA is useful whenever job tasks involve a lot of otherwise invisible cognitive stuff involving situation recognition, decision making, and problem solving. Representations of expertise from CTA have found their way into better user interface design, online information systems, and training that helped others solve workplace problems more like the organization’s best.

CTA also puts controls in place that guard against the inaccurate and incomplete self-reporting that otherwise occurs when experts tell you want it is they think they do on the job. Ever try to get a recipe from a good cook? They often can’t tell you what they do because expertise involves unconscious competence. Regardless of the particular CTA strategy, every CTA strategy puts controls in place to address this issue.

As you note, CTA is expensive. Ultimately, the decision to use CTA or not may involve whether the cost of collecting, representing, and applying CTA data is outweighed by the benefits of better on-the-job problem solving.

Here’s an excerpt from the pre-design analysis section that touches on cognitive task analysis:

“Among the strengths of the digital environment is the opportunity for ample practice of “thinking tasks” or cognitive tasks and the acquisition of mental models. Thinking tasks and cognitive tasks are referred to as covert tasks in the SABA Peak Performance System. The success of practice opportunities presented in the digital environment is largely dependent on the discovery of these cognitive tasks and the explication of mental models. Covert task definition is critical to the definition of accurate instructional objectives, meaningful activities, and successful acquisition of real world skills using Self-Paced eLearning.”

We aren’t very far down the road validating the practices or defining the context of application for CTA. That work will begin this year. We will be using Crandall, Klein, and Hoffman’s book on the subject in a few test cases. We’d like to identify how much / how deep is enough and in what cases this type of analysis will be most beneficial.

We’re a Harless Methodology shop and have been for well over a decade. This works pretty well for identifying the big parts but I believe it can miss some of the nuances that other methods can reveal. The challenge is in discovering which cases will make it worth the specialized effort.