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Good analysts don't automatically write good intelligence.
Course Description:
Analysis and writing are different skills. You can understand a problem deeply and still produce a product that confuses your reader, buries the lead, or fails to answer the question your client actually needs answered. Most analysts learn to write on the job, by trial and error, without a framework.
This course gives you the framework.
What Makes This Course Different
Most writing courses focus on grammar and style. We teach analytic craft — how to frame your topic for your specific audience, identify the right questions to drive your analysis, build a message that holds up under scrutiny, and structure the product to carry that message clearly to your client.
You don't practice on hypotheticals. You bring a real topic you're working on, with your background research already done, and you build an actual product during the course. By the end, you leave with something finished — and the process to do it again.
The concepts in this course apply across the spectrum of finished intelligence production, but focus strongly on producing written reports or in-depth analytic briefings.
At the end of this course, participants will be able to:
Frame analytic topics precisely around your client's actual needs
Generate the right focus questions to drive rigorous, relevant analysis
Compose reports that are clear, concise, and genuinely insightful — not just thorough
Build a storyline that carries your analytic message with confidence
Distinguish intelligence writing from academic and journalistic writing — and apply that distinction under pressure
Conduct structured self-review and peer review of analytic products
Course Outline:
Day 1:
Analytic standards refresher
Conceptualizing analysis
Framing for your audience
Day 2:
Asking the right questions
Analysis to answer questions
Generating relevant analytic messages
Day 3:
Building a storyline
Intelligence writing vs academic and journalistic writing
Day 4:
The analytic review process
Structured self-review
Structured sample review
Day 5:
Structured peer review
Structured report evaluation
Who this course is for:
Intelligence analysts at any experience level who produce written reports or briefings and want to do it more deliberately and effectively.
This isn't remedial training. Experienced analysts take this course to sharpen instincts they've built informally and replace improvised habits with a repeatable process. Junior analysts take it to build that foundation early.
Course Prerequisites:
No formal prerequisites. That said, participants should already have a working understanding of analytic intelligence tradecraft and tradecraft standards before attending.
If you're not sure your team has that foundation, we recommend completing our Tradecraft Standards of Analytic Production course first. It's designed to build exactly the grounding this course builds on.
Note: Participating analysts should already know their problem set and be familiar with their organisation’s format and standards. They should arrive to the course with both a topic they plan to work on and the background research for this topic already completed.
Format and Duration:
In-Person Classroom Training: 5 Days, 7 hours of instruction per day
Virtual/Remote Training: 5 days, 3.5 hours of instruction per day
Both formats cover the same material. The difference is how deep you go on practice.
In-person participants work through exercises with real-time instructor feedback — including peer review sessions with direct coaching on their own products. That level of interaction is hard to replicate remotely. If your goal is to build a product you can actually use and internalize the process for replicating it, in-person is worth the investment.
Virtual delivery is a solid option when logistics or budget make in-person impractical. You'll get the full curriculum and complete the core exercises — just with less back-and-forth, and participants will be expected to do much of the coursework outside of class hours.
What You Take Away
Every participant leaves with:
A certificate of completion
Slide handouts in PDF format
A set of worksheets, checklists, and job aids you can use immediately
A finished analytic product you built during the course
Six months of post-course support to answer questions and help you implement what you learned on the job
Ready to Schedule This for Your Team?
This course is available for individual enrollment and private organizational delivery. Contact us to discuss your team's needs and find a format that works.
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