Business Continuity For Dummies

Planning the Exercise and Its Objectives

Of course, your dedicated BC leader needs to be fully involved in planning your approach to validation, but which other staff take part depends on the size, complexity and structure of your organisation. In a company with a small workforce, the business owner probably wants a hands-on role.

Where several departments represent the organisation’s daily business, the business leader may want to nominate an exercise planner.

This planner can be your BC leader or a senior manager with a thorough knowledge of the organisation, in particular of the critical activities, processes and products, the business’s strategy and priorities, and the inter-dependencies of the management processes that support the product or service you provide. If your processes are very complex, someone with technical expertise may need to provide assistance. These people often know where to put the spanner in the works to get the best (worst!) effect.

An exercise gets an added punch when staff don’t know what disruption they’re going to have to deal with. So decide who does know the scenario in advance – keep the number very small in order to protect the integrity of the exercise – and who’s in for a surprise. This approach limits those involved in the planning and that’s ...