Is Your Contingency Plan Fireproof?

Business unit contingency planning was never more visible or more important than in 1999, when every senior manager had to review his or her operations in preparation for the Year 2000. A formal Business Impact Analysis (BIA) was conducted at many organizations - for the first time in some cases - to identify single points of failure and other risks and threats to business operations. But just because Year 2000 rolled in with little disruption, that's not to say that business unit contingency plans aren't worth the effort or that they are no longer important.

When preparing business unit contingency plans, the critical question is: are they feasible and appropriate? Everyone looks for a magic solution to this question. The problem is that the answer isn't so easy - it can only be determined through comprehensive testing of the contingency plans. And everyone hates testing.

One tool that can help assess the strength and reasonableness of the business unit contingency plan is a self-assessment questionnaire. In an organization that is developing plans for the first time or that has focused on IT recovery plans in the past, the use of a self-assessment questionnaire can be an effective way of identifying obvious weaknesses in the current plans. The accompanying questionnaire, completed by the people that know the business, can allow these plans to be brought to a new level of quality and effectiveness.

My suggestion is to provide the questionnaire to the writers of the business unit contingency plans and let them do their own analysis (through completion of the questions) and adjustments to their plans. In the ongoing maintenance of the plans (i.e. in the second year), I suggest a more formal feedback to the questionnaire.

BUSINESS UNIT CONTINGENCY PLANS

(SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONNAIRE)

FOCUS: Strengthening of Business Unit Contingency Plans

PURPOSE: Assist Business Unit Review of their Contingency Plans

The assessment of a Business Unit's Contingency Planning documentation should consider the following questions (at two levels):

ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL (BU) QUESTIONS

1. Do all critical functions of the Business Unit have contingency plans in place?

2. Do the contingency plans (level of content) reflect the risks and impacts involved?

3. Is the Business Unit prepared (capable) to implement their contingency plans?