Your business continuity and IT disaster recovery plans are living documents that need to continually evolve otherwise they will stagnate. If you maintain and exercise your plan it will evolve along with your organisation, helping you to be prepared should a business interruption strike.
Here are OpsCentre’s top 5 tips on how to keep the Business Continuity Plan alive in your organisation.
- Business Continuity needs a senior sponsor that has the authority and influence to establish the priority of BCP for the organisation. Get BCP on the agenda for Road Shows and Strategic Planning sessions that the Executive presents.
- Ensure that impacts upon Business Continuity Strategy are considered when assessing the business case for all new projects. Not just IT projects but business ones as well such as implementing new products, services or business locations. Ensure that any changes required to the business continuity strategy, for example extra seats at a recovery site, are included when you cost out the new project. You can also include reviewing the BIA and updating the recovery procedures for the affected business units as activities in the project. Update your business case templates and change request templates to prompt for these considerations up front.
- Include a BCP awareness package in the induction training for all new staff.
- Include business continuity ‘roles’ in position descriptions, workplans and KPI’s.
- Exercise and Test your plan every year at a minimum. Testing is not a pass or fail exercise, it helps to refine your plan and provides an excellent opportunity for staff to gain familiarity with their business continuity roles and the continuity strategies. It doesn’t have to be boring, business continuity can be an interesting, fun, team building event.
