Mission Critical

Too many people (ab)use the term MissionCritical to indicate some special significance of a project, as though the words had any kind of meaning beyond mere vocal rhythm. All endeavors an organization takes ultimately must contribute to the survival of said organization; therefore, all projects it undertakes must, by definition, offer some contribution to the company's successful execution of its mission. People need to either clarify precisely what is meant by "MissionCritical," or stop using it as an excuse to dismiss development methodologies, debuting technologies, or even maintaining the StatusQuo. Through clarification or use of more precise phraseology, the arguments one offers for or against the aforementioned becomes more objective and falsifiable, allowing for more rational discourse.

Possible alternatives, offering greater semantic meaning:

(from RealTimeVsMissionCritical) MissionCritical software is software whose failure might cause catastrophic consequences (such as someone dying, damage to property, severe financial losses, etc.) How about life critical, finance critical, et. al. instead? Less confusion results from the greater precision, and I dare say, amplifies the relative importance of the project if expressed in these terms. "He's dead, Jim. Spock finished analyzing the emergency stasis unit. The software failed to meet its life-critical requirements." "These new ATM machines now include triple-redundant systems to ensure proper operation of finance-critical software, thanks to these new voting algorithm chips." Etc.

Re: "All endeavors an organization takes ultimately must contribute to the survival of said organization [...]" - I reject this premise.

Organizations often have motivations for their endeavors that very often go beyond mere "survival". They invest monies and take risks, not for survival, but in order to achieve something beyond it: opportunities, prestige, greater profit, status, pride, etc.

Thus enabling the organization to survive. If a company only made enough cash to "just get by," inevitably, it fails. Capitalism depends on growth, not stability, to function.
Only publicly traded organizations need to grow each year just to survive. And framing this discussion in terms of Capitalism may be an AmericanCulturalAssumption on your part.

People using the term MissionCritical do not, generally, refer to those functions and endeavors that are either optional or where failure is an option. Your company-sponsored Christmas party is not MissionCritical.

No, of course not. Why would they? But, yet, it absolutely is MissionCritical.
I'm afraid I don't understand you. Are you implying that the way people use a phrase in practice should be considered irrelevant to its definition?
Without that party, corporate morale decreases. You get higher turnover rates. Your training expenses goes up. That eats into your bottomline. A few hundred dollars spent once a year might well save thousands over the course of the subsequent year.
Chances are that whomever is arranging the party does not have evidence beyond the speculative regarding the party's impact on morale or the relative cost vs. benefits analysis. At best, in terms of 'survival', one can assert that such parties offer networking opportunities in large organizations. They might have a positive morale impact. OTOH, feelings are often hurt at parties, too.
But, yet, nobody calls it "mission critical," precisely because its priority is on par with other, equally critical projects. Its importance doesn't diminish; it's just washed out by other equally important social and corporate functions.

McDonalds is unlikely to call its occasional goodwill housing projects MissionCritical. On the other hand, they've received an enormous amount of free advertising as a result of their Ronald McDonald House project.

It used to be that companies often sponsored teams for sports events. Obviously not MissionCritical.

Unless, that is, you consider the advertising that comes in exchange. Look at any stadium, and you see corporate logos, banners, signs, and slogans just plastered all over the place. You think a company would sponsor a team if they didn't get advertising opportunities in return? You're nuts (and have never run a business for yourself) if you think that.
If it was MissionCritical we'd still be sponsoring football teams the way we did in the 1920s. I.e. each company fully sponsors its own team. Advertising is, perhaps, a related issue... but was not what I was intended when I mentioned company sponsored teams.

And you are not likely to hand a 'MissionCritical' software task to an untried summer intern. But then again, you're not likely to give such a project to a vetted tried engineer either; in every case I personally can remember, every "MissionCritical" project I've seen a company undertake have been spearheaded by the senior scientist on staff, usually a co-founder of the company, or by someone who's been there at least five years and has project management skills under his belt.

During an economic crisis such as the one of 2008, choosing to focus on that which is MissionCritical, and using "it's not MissionCritical" as an excuse to avoid investing in experimental methodologies and new technologies, is an understandable decision. It might not be the wisest of ideas, and it certainly has an opportunity cost, but experience and history has repeatedly proven that hunkering down and avoiding unnecessary action is a successful strategy for riding out many a storm.

You are completely missing the point. This has nothing to do with the economic crisis of 2008, 2001, 1992, 1984, or any decade before, nor will it be relevant for any decade afterwards. The problem is that MissionCritical, as a term in and of itself, is bandied about by so many people in so many contexts in an attempt to sound oh-so-important when, in reality, their pet project's priority is only at parity with other projects. The term loses its meaning completely. Then these same people with self-inflated egos, who feel the need to append no less than three (potentially fictitious) titles and career adornments after their names, use the term in an effort to reject a technology, process, or other innovation. They sound like clueless valleygirls: "*tchya* Like, sure, but that would never work on a MissionCritical project." Give me a break.

Missing the point? I don't believe so. I don't disagree that there are some people that attach the 'priority' flag on every e-mail they send, and that call every little project 'MissionCritical'. Perhaps they have inflated egos, perhaps not... I'm not a person who cares to provide psychological analysis regarding such behavior. What I can say is that I've not seen these problems as more than isolated incidents. Most people do better. Most people do make a meaningful distinction between that which they call 'MissionCritical' and that which they consider merely 'Mission Aligned'.

Besides, it is during times of complacency and satiety that companies refuse to innovate the most. Why should they? They're sitting fat and happy, with no economic incentive what-so-ever to invest in R&D or new methods.

Companies can rest on their laurels only if they have no competition. They can accomplish this by being anti-competitive (e.g. buying up and smashing promising upstarts, or lobbying for laws that favor their de-facto monopolies). But most businesses don't manage to just sit on their fat arses... in part because engineers and scientists like to do R&D and researchy stuff and will seek excuses to do so with company money at any opportunity.

In terms of competitive software development, which is a form of applied R&D and engineering, one will often have two sets of requirements: those that you need (often based on comparison to a competitor's product), and those that you want (to go above and beyond what the competition is offering). In this, one might call MissionCritical the feature set that one 'needs'. If you fail to accomplish that much, you competitor will look better than you do.

This does not go far enough along the "need" spectrum.

That depends on how you frame your mission, I imagine. The DoD probably doesn't "need" whatever product you're offering them, but your project (and your project's associated organization) still "needs" to accomplish the threshold DoD acquisition requirements if it is to continue receiving funding and required authorizations. (DoD acquisition distinguishes between threshold (needs) and objective (wants).)

Something is mission critical if, and only if, failure of the something will cause the mission of the organization to fail. For example:

The O-rings on the SpaceShuttle's SolidRocketBooster?s are MissionCritical. If they break during liftoff, the shuttle explodes.
For a restaurant, having working hot water in the restrooms is MissionCritical, if there is any chance that a HealthInspector? can find out about a lack of hot water. If a HealthInspector? learns that the restaurant does not care about sanitation, he can shut the restaurant down. (This is an AmericanCulturalAssumption.)
For an electric utility, the SCADA system is MissionCritical. If the computers shut off all the power, the utility is (at least temporarily) out of business.

The term MissionCritical, if applied properly, describes projects, processes, technologies, etc. without which the organization is significantly hampered in its attempts to conduct business. Much of the stuff within an organization is there (ostensibly) to make the organization do business better - e.g. to respond faster, get more customers, etc. These items are supportive, not mission-critical.

By way of example, the ability to process credit cards is MissionCritical for a retail outlet: as a result, they have many, many layers of backup (down to manual machines to imprint the cards). If they stop being able to process cards for very long, they cannot stay in business (at least in the US, where most people have stopped carrying significant amounts of cash and using checks). However, the ability for the same retail organization to have customer-facing price-check scanners in their stores is not MissionCritical.

I think the ire against the term comes from ProjectManglers? who invoke it to mean "it will look bad if we fail" instead of "if it fails, the company might actually go under". An appropriate response to faux-MissionCritical claims is to ask to see the BusinessContinuityPlan? that supports the claim. -- DarrenPMeyer

I have found a big difference between MissionCritical and LifeCritical. To use the Space Shuttle analogy, the O-rings are not MissionCritical. They are LifeCritical; if they fail, someone dies. The big robot arm that fetches satellites, the laptops they use for lab experiments, are all mission critical.

To bring this back around to software, I make the distinction because most of us can "only" write MissionCritical software, not LifeCritical systems.

--RobMandeville