It sounds terrifically important, to say that something is “mission critical”, and the definition is;
An activity, device, service or system whose failure or disruption will cause a failure in business operations. For example, for an online business its online transaction system is mission critical.
But I hear the term used to describe a range of things that I really don’t think are mission critical, so the term is in danger of losing its meaning. I suspect it is often used to mean that if a process or project fails we will look bad – rather than the company will sustain huge losses and may go under.
I think there are two factors needed to make something mission critical;
- immediate impact
- substantial loss or cost
Immediate impact, because if the impact is apparent only slowly then I think a business has time to improve the process or system, and repair the damage. The word critical implies an urgency.
Substantial loss or cost, because if it’s a relatively small amount then the company is not at risk of failure.
The last use I heard of it at work was in relation to a powerpoint presentation. Hmmm, I think not.
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image Shuttle Mission Control /Harrison Earl/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
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