BCP articles
This blog started as a business continuity planning (BCP) forum. Here are some of the key articles on business continuity. You’ll find ideas on how to sell BCP within your organization, and on why BCP is important.
Some articles, for instance the ones on BCP scenarios, offer ideas and opinions that differ from the mainstream.
First, here’s my basic presentation.
Intro: Why business continuity?
- Dilbert’s take on business continuity and disaster recovery.
- Why have business continuity?
- Is it just for large organizations?
- It’s more than insurance.
- Eisenhower’s motto: Plans are useless but planning is essential.
- The most important task: convincing people, selling a chore.
What is business continuity?
- It’s part of operational risk.
- It’s about the business surviving through a crisis.
- It’s not the same thing as disaster recovery.
- It’s BUSINESS continuity.
- One case study: prioritizing core actvities.
- A BCP glossary.
A different way to think about disaster scenarios
Conventional wisdom wants us to prepare for specific disasters: earthquakes, fires, tsunamis, flu epidemics, what have you.
The articles below argue that it’s better to plan for abstract impact scenarios organized around several dimensions. First, by what the organization can lose in term of capacity, resources, and assets. Second, by how widely the disaster spreads within an industry. Third, by how long the loss is expected to last.
- What COULD happen?
- Organizing your scenarios along impact, duration, and scope.
- A list of impact scenarios.
The trade off between business efficiency and safety
- Why redundancy is good and single points of failure are bad.
- Your business needs process charts.
- Redundancy doesn’t mean doubling everything.
- Alternate office sites are cheap.
Copyright 2011, Vincent Poirier
