Business Continuity For Dummies

Creating Your Own BC Plan

In this section we look at the sort of considerations to think about while pulling together your plan. We provide a simple way of taking the information that you have and turning it into a BC plan that is agreed by senior management and validated through testing, so that it’s ready for use.

Of course the details are going to be specific to your business, and so what we include are some considerations covering more general responsibilities during the stages of an incident.

Reflecting on roles and responsibilities

You want to make clear who should be doing what when you invoke a BC plan. Working out these responsibilities at this stage is far easier than later on when time is tight.

We split the levels of responsibilities into strategic and tactical areas (as we mention in the earlier section ‘Deciding what to include in your plan’). Keeping managers a step back from the actual incident in this way makes sense and allows them to concentrate on the overall picture and get perspective on what people need to do.

Base the precise details (such as what people need to do and where placing staff members is most beneficial) on your continuity strategy (see Chapter 7), the size of your business and the nature of the disruption.

Chewing over strategic responsibilities

A great deal of strategic responsibility is about sound decision-making, anticipating what’s going ...