Title: 4.1 - Why Do We Label Functions As Mission Critical?
Course: Introduction to Mission Critical > Section: Introduction to Mission Critical

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Overview

Critical means, “Having a decisive or crucial importance in the success, failure, or existence of something” [1]. Mission critical is defined as a factor of a system whose failure will result in the failure of business operations [2]. In other words if it is something that is critical to an organization’s mission, it is called mission critical.

Prioritizing

What we are doing when we label the functions of industry with terms like mission critical, is prioritizing these functions. Different industries may use slightly different terminology to label their functions in order of priority but the majority should be similar to what we learn here.

1) Mission Critical – the top priority, the most important functions, those functions whose failure will result in failure or loss of operation.

2) Business Critical – the second most important category of functions. Without these functions, the organization does not end but its loss typically becomes more damaging over time and affects other functions and/or business aspects.

3) Important – the third most important category of functions within an organization. The loss of functions in this category is an aggravation, it requires some extra work to find ways of getting the overall job done without these functions, and if this function is lost for a long period of time a replacement function or new of accomplishing the goal of this function will eventually have to be put into place.

Why Prioritize?

In most organizations it makes sense to decide which functions are mission critical, business critical, or important so those functions can be protected and contingency plans created to use in case of their loss. Knowing a function’s level of importance can be helpful in prioritizing which functions get the most man hours or the biggest part of the budget. It is also quite helpful when it comes to planning ahead for possible scenarios that involve the loss of functions and will help an organization in the event an emergency or disaster does occur.