The Group Planning exercise/Military Planning Exercise  necessarily reveals the “behavior of the group, when having met with real life situations and practical problems of varying complexity. The Group Planning exercise/Military Planning Exercise  is so very well designed that,a person with some basic logic and average reasoning can conveniently find a solution.

This test basically designed to check our decision making capabilities i.e. how quick and effective we are in making decision in time bounded environment. We are given a set of problems all of the problems need to be solved in different time constraints. This test involves few steps and according to mine experience, I would like to tell you what to be done in which step.

Step 1: Brief introduction of the concerned area by GTO

Friend here you need to be very attentive because if you missed any place or misinterpreted anything on map, it will hamper your performance. so be attentive, listen to every minute detail meticulously and keep them in mind.

Step 2: In next step GTO is going to read out the problem in the concerned area to you. So at the end of this step you must be able to answer these questions to yourself.

• How many problems are there?
• What are the resources given and hidden?
• What are Time constraints of each problem?
• What are other constraints like no telephone is working, your vehicle broke down. Head lights are not working and so on.

Step 3: Now GTO will give you 5 min. to read out the write up of the problem. Friend if you were good in listening and were attentive in step 2 then in this step you will get advantage. Those five minutes you can utilize in your planning. now be quick and do the followings.

• Decide priorities of problems
• As a problem can be solved in more than one ways.
• Most important thing which I learned recently from ssb board GTO that whenever you have a choice between possibility and certainty go for certainty. Example. You are on a road with an injured person, you have two options one to take lift and at a short distance you have a petrol pump or garage. Then it is certain that you will get vehicle at garage or pump, but you may or may not get lift. So always select an option which is accessible to you and which ensures you the solution.
• After you get a solution to each problem now you have a clear idea about how many persons are needed in each problem. So now you can decide in how many sub groups you will divide your team.

Step 4: In this step GTO will ask you write your individual solution on a paper. Let me clear my friends everything is evaluated in SSB, nothing is just for time pass, so do not believe on rumors that this copy will not be evaluated. For writing always follow a particular way so that you don’t miss anything. Like this

“We group of _ friends, on our way to the —encountered with some problems. According to priority problems are:-

A:-

B:-

C:-

Write what you have (resources) quickly,  and always mention hidden resources as it shows you are practical and can think other options too.

Now write I will divide my group in _ sub groups of 1,2,3 (according to you)

Now attending each problem priority wise write down solution attending these points for each

Who, what, when, where, how, time- distance and action

Always mention distance according to scale given to you, you can go to the model or map and measure it with you hand so that you can get a rough idea of distance and time needed to travel that distance using the particular mode of transport.

After you finish this reassemble your group mates and move where you were going prior to the problems.

Step 5: group discussion to reach a common solution. Again it is a discussion so all the things which are tested in GDs ,will be there. But this time one more thing will be tested

• Decision making ability
• How you persuade others to your decision.
• Presence of mind and listening are most important things.