National Weather Service Professional Development Series Professional Competency Unit

Producer: Jeff Manion and Scott Reynolds

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Description of Job Duty Competency to be Achieved

Develop knowledge and skills to more effectively manage forecast operations and the digital forecast database.

Description of Need

The leadership of the WFO, the Senior Forecasters and Management staff, must have the tools and knowledge necessary to best utilize workforce and other resources, especially during significant weather. Many of these "leaders," Senior Forecasters in particular, have received little or no formal training in the areas of leadership, change management, or time management.

Specific Job Task Skills and Knowledge

1. Fully understand the changes that the NWS is adopting, including the migration from a "product suite" to an "information suite."

2. Apply leadership and change management skills necessary to best utilize all available resources in the WFO work environment.
   

Instructional Components

Instructional Component 5.1: Forecaster leadership training. (Mostly lead forecasters, possibly some management or general forecasters)

Provides leadership training for all Senior Forecasters at the WFO. Also provides leadership training for those members of the WFO Management Team that have not already received such.

Possible Methods:

• For specific topics (such as grid management)
  • Teletraining
  • Local workshops
• For more general leadership training
  • Local workshops
  • Residence courses. Some examples include:
    • NWSTC Field Operations Management Course
    • NWSTC Executive Leadership Seminar
    • OPM Leadership Courses
  • Distance Learning
    • NOAA Leadership Training Program
    • USDA Graduate Program Courses

Instructional Component 5.2: Optimizing workforce resources. (Both lead forecasters an management)

This component will look at a variety of strategies in managing workforce resources within the WFO. This component will work in tandem with IC 5.1 (Forecaster leadership training).

Possible issues to be included:

• Involving the HMT/Meteorologist Intern staff into near term forecast updates and weather watch
• Incorporating LAPS and MAPS data to assist in near term updates when human resources are diverted to higher priority tasks (i.e. severe weather)
• Judgment of when "Short Term" ends and "Long Term" begins
• Managing multiple forecasters in the database

Possible training methods:

• Teletraining
• Web-based tutorials
• Train-the-trainer (Trainer then leads local seminars/workshops)

Instructional Component 5.3: Grid management. (Both lead forecasters an management)

This component will look at a variety of strategies in managing the grid editing tasks within IFPS. This component will work in tandem with PCU 3 (Forecast Methodology).

Possible issues to be included (all in tandem with PCU 3):

• Knowing when to commit data to "official"
• Initialization techniques
• Interpolation techniques

Possible methods:

• Teletraining
• Web-based tutorials
• Train-the-trainer (Trainer then leads local seminars/workshops)

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Return to the IFPS PDS page

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Last Updated or Reviewed on 4/22/02

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