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TL;DR: The Mission Engineering Guide outlines a structured analysis to identify needs, solutions, and operational concepts within military contexts, which can also benefit civilian enterprises. The guide’s core principles include defining specific mission purposes, identifying gaps in capabilities, and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration across organizational functions. By employing quantitative methods and scenario planning, businesses can enhance decision-making while optimizing resource allocation and improving processes. The guide emphasizes the importance of establishing metrics to measure success and performance, drawing parallels between military and business operations. Ultimately, adopting these methodologies allows civilian organizations to improve strategic alignment, innovation, and resilience in addressing challenges.
The Mission Engineering Guide was published by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering – Mission Capabilities in October 2023. The link to the webpage that introduces the guide is here and the link to the guide itself is here.
Mission Engineering is the analysis used to identify needs and solutions, explore trades across the mission, mature operational concepts, guide requirements and resource planning, inform experimentation, and prototype selection or program decisions. Clearly, just based on the entity publishing this guide, its primary use case is to support military operations but I believe strongly that many of its precepts can help mature systems engineering effort in civilian enterprise contexts by bridging the gap between operational needs and system capabilities and it is with this in mind that I write a short summary and review of the guide.
Definitions
Some refined definitions (I removed military specific jargon):
Capability: The ability to complete a task or execute a course of action under specified conditions and level of performance.
Concept of Operations (CONOPS): The verbal or graphic statement that clearly and concisely expresses what the organizational intends to accomplish and how it will be done using available resources.
Epoch: A time period of static context and stakeholder expectations, similarly a snapshot of a potential future. For acquisition planning, three epochs are usually defined: 1) near term – up to two years into the future 2) mid-term – up to five years into the future, and 3) long-term – 5–10 years into the future.
Mission: The set of purpose-specified tasks and actions undertaken to achieve a specific objective.
Mission Context: The background setting, conditions, timeframe, operational strategies, and objectives of the mission.
Mission Thread: A sequence of end-to-end mission tasks, activities, and events presented as a series of steps to achieve a mission. A Mission Thread occurs in the context of a Vignette.
Mission Engineering Thread: Mission threads that include the details of the capabilities, technologies, systems, and organizations required to execute the mission.
Scenario: The description of the geographical location and timeframe of the operational context. A scenario includes information such as actor and threat actor contexts and backgrounds, assumptions, constraints, limitations, strategic objectives, and other planning considerations. The scenario captures the specific description and intent of the mission, i.e., its objectives and CONOPS, along with its associated epoch and the relevant operational and environmental conditions.
Vignette: The set of important aspects of the scenario related to the mission engineering effort. Ideally a self-contained segment of Scenario.
Summary of Guide
I summarize the guide as follows (if I don’t expand on a heading its because the heading is self-explanatory):
- Mission Problem & Opportunity
1.1. Identify Mission and Mission Engineering Purpose
When you start the mission engineering effort you need identify a) what is the specific mission and b) what is the purpose of the missioning engineering effort. Purposes can be either:
- Identify potential gaps and quantify shortfalls in the ability to achieve the desired mission outcome(s)
- Explore mission cause-and-effect relationships, or sensitivity analysis, to gain deeper understanding of the factors affecting mission outcomes.
- Evaluate trade space of potential solutions to address known gaps within the mission.
- Investigate mission impact of new opportunities, which can include changes to, or the integration of new technologies, capabilities, or concept of operations.
1.2. Determine Investigative Questions
The investigative question of the mission engineering effort will instantiate the purpose making it specific to the enterprise.
1.3 Identify and Engage Stakeholders
- Mission Characterization
2.1 Develop Mission Context
Ask the following questions:
- What is the purpose of the mission?
- When and where does the mission occur?
- Who is involved?
- How is the mission to be executed?
Also consider the following:
- Physical environment
- Operational environment
- Resources, capabilities and threat actors and their relationships
- Information environment
- Organizational constraints (including policies and facilities)
- Personnel (including leadership) competence and availability
- Training and education capacities and efficacies
- Local, State, National, International political and geopolitical contexts
The collection of this information forms a Scenario.
The scenario may be (likely only partially) decomposed into Vignettes.
2.2 Define Mission Measures and Metrics
What is the Measure of Success (MoS) of the Mission?
What are the Measures of Effectiveness (MoE) of the subset set of tasks and activities of the Mission?
What are the Measures of Performance (MoP) of the Capabilities executing the tasks and activities?
MoPs support MoE which support MoS.
3. Mission Architectures
Mission Architecture bridges the gap between enterprise operations and the resources and capabilities that execute operations. Key elements of the Mission Architecture are Mission Threads which capture the activities of a given mission approach, and Mission Engineering Threads which is the assignment of capabilities that perform tasks, activities, and events in the approach to conduct a mission
3.1 Identify Mission Threads
3.2 Identify Mission Engineering Threads
3.3 Develop Baseline and Alternative Mission Threads and Mission Engineering Threads
4. Mission Engineering Analysis
The core function of mission engineering analysis is to evaluate mission architectures within the specific scenario-based mission context to provide quantitative outputs that explore mission success.
4.1 Design of Analysis
4.1.1 Develop and Organize Evaluation Framework.
Evaluation Framework is a structured set of mission approaches to be analyzed in a specific mission scenario or vignette. Should include the mission baseline and an alternative for comparison.
4.1.2 Identify Computational Methodology and Simulation Tools
4.1.3 Organize and Review Datasets
4.2 Execute Models, Simulation and Analysis
- Execute and analyze the baseline mission approach
- Update the evaluation framework as necessary
- Execute and analyze the alternative mission approaches
- Validate and analyze findings
4.3 Adjust Mission Threads and Mission Engineering Threads.
Applications to Civilian Contexts
With its obvious emphasis on ‘mission’ you may be forgiven if you do not see how the guide can be applied to a civilian enterprise. Here is how the guide can apply:
- Strategic Planning and Objective Alignment
- Understanding Objectives: Just as mission engineering focuses on defining mission success and objectives in military operations, civilian enterprises can use similar methodologies to establish clear organizational goals. This aligns resources and efforts toward achieving specific business outcomes.
- Gap Analysis: Similar to identifying military capability gaps, businesses can assess their current performance against desired outcomes, identifying gaps in capabilities, processes, or resources that need to be addressed to meet strategic objectives.
2. Interdisciplinary Collaboration
- Engagement Across Functions: The guide emphasizes engaging stakeholders from various disciplines. Civilian enterprises can benefit from fostering collaboration among different departments (e.g., marketing, operations, finance, IT) to ensure that all perspectives inform decision-making.
- Bridging Silos: Like military operations that require integration across units, civilian organizations can use mission engineering concepts to promote cross-functional teams that work together towards common goals.
3. Data-Driven Decision Making
- Quantitative Analysis: The use of quantitative methods to assess capabilities and performance can be applied not just in military contexts but in business through data analytics, performance metrics, and benchmarking to guide strategic decisions.
- Scenario Planning: Similar to military scenario development, businesses can simulate different market conditions and operational strategies to understand potential outcomes and impacts, enabling better risk management.
4. Process Improvement and Optimization
- Mission Architecture: The concept of mission architectures can be translated to process mapping in businesses, where organizations delineate workflows, identify critical tasks, and optimize resource allocation for higher efficiency.
- Systems Thinking: Understanding interdependencies among various business units or systems can lead to improved operational efficiencies and better integration of new technologies, akin to assessing systems of systems (SoS) in military operations.
5. Innovation and Capability Development
- Capability Evaluation: Organizations can adopt similar methods to evaluate new technologies or processes before full implementation, ensuring that investments align with strategic objectives and provide measurable benefits.
- Prototyping and Experimentation: The principles of ‘gaming’ used in mission engineering can help organizations to innovate by testing new ideas or processes on a smaller scale before broader rollout.
6. Performance Measurement
- Measures and Metrics: The emphasis on using Measures of Success (MOSs) to validate the efficacies of mission design and execution can inform how organizations can use operational goals to cascade measures of effectiveness (MOEs) and measures of performance (MOPs) throughout the organization to effectively track success and inform continuous improvement efforts.
- Feedback Loops: Establishing methods to gather feedback and analyze results can inform iterative improvements to processes and strategies, ensuring adaptability in a rapidly changing market.
7. Resource Allocation and Risk Management
- Resource Optimization: The trading space analysis from the guide can help businesses determine the most effective allocation of limited resources (financial, human, technological) towards initiatives that yield the highest return.
- Identifying Risks: The approach of identifying potential issues and exploring “what if” scenarios can enhance risk management practices in organizations, allowing businesses to be more resilient to unexpected challenges.
Conclusion
By adopting the methodologies and principles from the Mission Engineering Guide, civilian organizations can enhance strategic alignment, improve decision-making, foster collaboration, and drive performance enhancements. The structured, analytical approach of mission engineering provides valuable frameworks for organizations seeking to optimize operations and achieve their business objectives.
Yes. This guide on Mission Engineering is very much applicable to civilian organizations!
Comments
2 responses to “Unlocking Mission Engineering for Organizational Success”
I agree the guide on Mission Engineering is very applicable to civilian organizations! It provides a methology and work breakdown necessary for a program or project to be aligned with higher level goals and objectives. For wider use in civilian organizations, it would be helpful for some of the terminilogy to be translated into language civilian organiations use. i.e how many senior managers know their organization’s mission? It is not language they use. However, that does not demean the value the guide. Often a comparison to the military is a good model to learn and follow.
Thanks Ray! If we reframe ‘mission’ as organizational objectives or goals, e.g. to deliver project X on time and on budget, then I do think the guides improves its relevance to civilian enterprises. Stepping back a bit though the organization should have a ConOps (I’m using the INCOSE adopted definition in of the term) that frame individual organizational objectives, something that I would like to explore more.
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