Read the common planning language of maps, grids, phase lines, boundaries, objectives, control measures, and military symbols. You will be able to follow a simple operation sketch before the course adds staff detail.

Trace how Army planning grew from earlier staff procedures into today’s MDMP. The chapter connects doctrine, mission command, large-scale combat, and the need for a repeatable planning method.

Place MDMP inside Army doctrine, mission command, and the operations process of plan, prepare, execute, and assess. You will see where MDMP fits and where it connects to troop leading procedures and rapid decision-making.

Identify what the commander, chief of staff or XO, S-2, S-3, fires, sustainment, protection, signal, and other staff sections contribute. The chapter shows how planning succeeds when each staff section owns its running estimate.

Set up the planning workspace, references, maps, digital folders, battle rhythm, briefings, and product standards. You will practice organizing a staff so planning starts clean instead of chaotic.

Turn a new order, fragmentary order, or verbal tasking into the first actions of MDMP. This chapter covers alerting the staff, identifying available time, issuing the first warning order, and starting initial running estimates.

Build a backward planning timeline from execution to order release to briefings and rehearsals. You will practice protecting time for subordinate units instead of spending the whole clock at higher headquarters.

Separate facts from assumptions, list constraints and limitations, and decide which information must be confirmed. This gives the staff a disciplined starting point for analysis and prevents planning on guesses without tracking them.

Use intelligence preparation of the battlefield to frame the area of operations, area of interest, enemy, terrain, weather, and civil considerations. The chapter keeps IPB practical by tying each product to decisions the commander must make.

Analyze observation, cover, concealment, obstacles, key terrain, avenues of approach, weather, and civilian factors. You will turn terrain and weather into advantages, risks, and planning requirements.

Build enemy templates, identify enemy capabilities, and describe likely enemy courses of action. This chapter shows how intelligence supports planning without pretending to predict the future perfectly.

Read higher headquarters orders for intent, concept of operations, specified tasks, implied tasks, essential tasks, and coordinating instructions. You will practice turning a long order into what your unit must actually do.

Write a clear mission statement with who, what, when, where, and why. The chapter also covers commander’s intent, key tasks, end state, and how these guide the staff when conditions change.

Create priority intelligence requirements, friendly force information requirements, and essential elements of friendly information. You will connect CCIRs to decision points, reports, and the commander’s ability to act in time.

Maintain running estimates for intelligence, movement and maneuver, fires, protection, sustainment, mission command, and other staff areas. The chapter shows how running estimates become living tools, not paperwork.

Prepare and deliver a mission analysis brief that gives the commander useful choices and a clear recommendation. You will practice presenting facts, assumptions, risks, proposed problem statement, mission, and planning guidance.

Turn the commander’s planning guidance into practical boundaries for course of action development. This includes decisive operation, shaping operations, sustaining operations, risk guidance, and initial commander’s critical information needs.

Create friendly courses of action that are suitable, feasible, acceptable, distinguishable, and complete. You will practice building COAs with task organization, main effort, scheme of maneuver, fires, sustainment, protection, and command relationships.

Synchronize movement and maneuver, intelligence, fires, sustainment, protection, mission command, cyber, information, and other capabilities. This chapter teaches how staff sections turn a COA into coordinated action instead of separate plans.

Apply risk management, fratricide prevention, law of armed conflict, rules of engagement, civilian harm mitigation, and safety controls to planning. You will see how legal and ethical duties shape real staff recommendations.

Draw COA sketches, write COA statements, place decision points, and identify branches and sequels. The goal is a COA that another person can brief, wargame, and compare without hidden assumptions.

Run a disciplined wargame using action, reaction, and counteraction. This chapter covers the box, belt, and avenue-in-depth methods and shows how to test a plan against enemy action and battlefield friction.

Record wargame results in a synchronization matrix, decision support template, decision support matrix, risk list, and refined running estimates. You will capture what matters so the staff can improve the plan instead of just talking through it.

Choose evaluation criteria, compare COAs honestly, and avoid letting favorite plans win by default. The chapter covers decision matrices, advantages and disadvantages, risk comparison, and staff recommendations.

Prepare the COA decision brief and support the commander’s selection, modification, or rejection of a COA. You will practice turning staff analysis into a decision the unit can act on.

Turn the approved COA into an operation order with base order, annexes, appendixes, tabs, exhibits, overlays, and distribution rules. The chapter focuses on orders that are complete enough to execute but clear enough to use.

Build graphics, synchronization tools, execution matrices, fire support products, sustainment products, signal products, and protection products that subordinate units can read quickly. You will practice checking products for consistency across the whole order.

Issue the order, confirm receipt, brief key parts, and hand the plan to current operations. This chapter covers confirmation briefs, backbriefs, liaison, and the transition from future planning to execution.

Plan and run backbriefs, combined arms rehearsals, support rehearsals, sustainment rehearsals, and communications rehearsals. You will see how rehearsals expose gaps before the operation begins.

Use assessment measures, reports, CCIRs, battle tracking, and commander updates during execution. The chapter shows how fragmentary orders, branches, and sequels keep the operation moving as reality changes.

Compress MDMP when time is short without skipping the commander’s decision needs. You will practice rapid planning, parallel planning, warning orders, and handoffs to troop leading procedures.

Follow a brigade-level scenario from receipt of mission through mission analysis, COA development, wargaming, approval, order production, rehearsal, and assessment. This chapter ties the whole process together in one complete staff workflow.

Adapt MDMP for large-scale combat operations with deep, close, rear, and support-area problems. The chapter covers mass, tempo, contested logistics, air defense, long-range fires, and rapid displacement under threat.

Use MDMP for multi-domain operations where land, air, maritime, space, cyberspace, and the information environment interact. You will connect convergence, windows of opportunity, cross-domain effects, and joint capabilities to Army planning products.

Integrate cyber, electromagnetic warfare, spectrum management, signals intelligence concerns, and communications protection into MDMP. The chapter shows how staffs plan when networks, sensors, jammers, and signatures affect survival and success.

Plan with space-enabled services such as positioning, navigation, timing, satellite communications, weather data, missile warning, and imagery. You will also consider what happens when those services are degraded, denied, or spoofed.

Work with digital maps, common operational pictures, chat tools, planning portals, mission command systems, and shared data. This chapter stresses version control, data discipline, permissions, outages, and the danger of trusting a screen more than the situation.

Use AI-assisted tools for drafting, summarizing, pattern finding, and decision support while protecting classified information, source quality, and commander judgment. You will practice checking AI output instead of treating it as authority.

Protect planning information through classification rules, need-to-know, releasability, operations security, and secure collaboration habits. The chapter covers common mistakes that expose intent, timelines, capabilities, or unit vulnerabilities.

Fit Army MDMP into joint, interagency, multinational, and host-nation planning environments. You will handle liaison, different planning terms, caveats, authorities, interoperability, and orders that must make sense across partners.

Review completed plans and operations through after action reviews, staff journals, product audits, and lessons learned. This chapter helps a staff improve its MDMP rhythm instead of repeating the same planning problems.

Map the roles that use MDMP, from platoon-adjacent leaders to battalion, brigade, division, and corps staffs. The chapter covers useful doctrine, schools, proof-of-skill products, mentorship, professional reading, and ways to stay current as Army planning evolves.