The Close Combat Tactical Trainer (CCTT) is being developed using a concurrent engineering approach that organizes the engineering effort into integrated teams assigned by major system components or products. These integrated teams include industry representatives, Army systems materiel development engineering staff from STRICOM, and TRADOC user representatives. Some users are assigned to an integrated development facility which is located near the material development customer so that they can interact on a daily basis with the engineering staff. Others are proponent level subject matter experts assigned to normal training and combat development jobs at the Army proponent schools and centers but readily accessible to the engineering staff. A key member of the development team staff, the CCTT Training Effectiveness Advocate, has as a primary responsibility implementing this concept.

CCTT development requires a strong user focus because it is a complex training system with a primary product of improving human performance. Major training system development efforts, like CCTT, must focus on human performance as a product rather than as merely one consideration in determining overall system effectiveness. This requires the development effort to have a user-centered design focus. Furthermore, CCTT is an extremely complex Human-Computer Interaction system. The combination of these two factors resulted in a joint industry/government decision to include field users up-front in the design and development phase of the program.