Incident Management Mission Diagnostic Method, Version 1.0 - Cert

MISSION RISK
For this document, the term mission risk represents the range of
outcomes for a given set of IMC objectives, based on current
conditions, potential events, context, and how IMC functions are
executed.
POTENTIAL FOR
SUCCESS
The IMC’s potential for success is the likelihood that an IMC’s
outcome will be viewed as successful (and thus acceptable to
stakeholders). This concept is generally illustrated in Figure 1. Notice
that some outcomes are considered to be acceptable, while others are
viewed as unacceptable. Each of these outcomes is more or less likely
given current conditions 5 .
The dividing line between acceptable and unacceptable outcomes is
the success threshold. This represents IMC management’s tolerance
for risk. This tolerance is normally influenced by choice (e.g., personal
preference of a manager) as well as circumstance (e.g., stakeholder
expectations). The likelihood that an acceptable, or successful,
outcome will be achieved is defined as the potential for success. The
potential for success is the most likely outcome for the IMC given the
current conditions, events, and context.
Figure 1:
Successful and Unsuccessful Outcomes of an IMC
5
The probability associated with these outcomes is not equally dispersed across the different outcomes. In the
IMMD, these probabilities are only estimated, as this version does provide the depth of detailed data gathering
and analysis to support an accurate calculation of probability.
6 | CMU/SEI-2008-TR-007