Business Continuity For Dummies

Building Your BC Plan

Armed with the considerations that we discuss in the preceding section, you can set about developing your plan. In this section, we use a three-stage process – preparation, creation and validation – that helps you produce plans consistently and to a good standard, no matter how many plans you have.

Figure 8-3 lays out the process of developing a BC plan in more detail.

Figure 8-3: The development process for building a BC plan.

Stage 1: Preparing for your plan

Ensure that you have to hand the information that you need. Collect together your risk register and continuity strategy response spreadsheet (we guide you through creating these items in Chapters 5 and 7 respectively).

Next, decide upon the structure, format, components and contents of your plan. The first elements are, in most cases, the same for all, or most of, your plans and so your risk register and continuity strategy response need only the briefest of revisits if you’re happy with them. The next step is also something that may not change much because it sets the scope of your plan.

If you have multiple sites, consider pulling together the plans for each one into groups.

Stage 2: Creating your plan

Start Stage 2 by allocating an owner – someone who’s most likely to take the lead on a particular ...