MISSION AND BUSINESS ENGINEERING: Aligning Purpose, Performance and Enterprise Systems

Abstract

Modern mission enterprises are complex, multi-actor ecosystems in which mission outcomes depend not only on individual system performance, but on the coherence of the enterprise that conceives, develops, governs, and sustains them. Persistent misalignment between mission intent, enterprise behaviour, and system development arises from fragmented incentives, siloed optimisation, and contractual boundaries that restrict iteration and limit the ability to act on new insight.

This paper introduces Mission and Business Engineering (MBE) as a meta-discipline for addressing these challenges. MBE integrates mission logic, enterprise structure, and system behaviour within an Architecture of Intent grounded in Fit–Form–Function. By treating the mission enterprise itself as a system-of-interest, MBE provides modelling constructs, decision mechanisms, and alignment structures for sustaining coherence across organisational boundaries, life cycles, and evolving mission contexts.

The paper diagnoses systemic sources of mission–enterprise misalignment, explains why existing discipline-specific approaches are insufficient, presents the MBE meta-architecture and its three structural pillars, and outlines an illustrative implementation pathway. The result is a framework that complements, but extends beyond, ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 and the DoD Mission Engineering Guide by helping practitioners engineer mission-coherent enterprises capable of delivering effective outcomes in complex environments.