Most defence problems - especially strategic ones - are messy. This course will assist students to frame these problems in a coherent - mostly qualitative - manner. The course trains students to appreciate, scope and structure issues that are poorly defined or understood through exploration of so-called soft operations research techniques so that reasonable proposals may be made for executive action in areas which cannot be logically solved. It will cover the following topics; Problems and Wicked Problems, Influence Diagrams and Decision Trees, Morphological analysis and Mind Mapping, soft systems methods, SODA, Strategic choice approach, robustness analysis, Drama Theory, Multi-methodology, and Case studies.