Packing Your Parachute & Business Continuity Planning

Yesterday in a presentation to a new client one of the participants announced that he “finally got it”. He stated to his counterparts that “developing a business continuity plan was like packing a parachute.” Think about it – I’ve even made the same statement myself, in a different fashion but the translations are still the same. “There is a right way and a wrong way to develop your plan, what matters is the fact that the thing needs to work when the time comes.”

The “Professional Practices” that have been developed, that define just how a business continuity plan should be put together, is the “right way”. Any other way is the “wrong way”. As I’ve said in the past – Can you afford to do it the wrong way? When that business disruption occurs that we all hope never happens, you want to hit the ground running, not hit the ground.

Think about it … you need to familiarize yourselves with those “Professional Practices”. If you are just starting to develop your plan, build your plan accordingly. If you have what you consider a viable plan, visit those “Professional Practices” and make sure you have “packed your chute” correctly.

Remember your business continuity plan – given the right event – might be the only remaining element of your business. Technology.inc.com agrees that, “Having a business continuity plan to help ensure the survivability of your business is essential these days.” It has to work or you are out of business. That statistic is well proven!

Back to School….Back to Business Continuity

Business Continuity is NOT a Seasonal Activity – It Will Take You Forever!

I’ve been doing business continuity planning in one form or another for sometime now – 33 years or so. One thing that has always amazed me is how business continuity planning is a seasonal activity. If you were to look at it from a calendar year perspective, from my experience, the process begins in January, after the holidays and gets pretty intense – an every other week activity (if you’re lucky). That works until June when school gets out and stops for the summer. When school gets back in session, it picks up at the same serious pace that occurs from January till June. Then you hit the wall again in November, when the holiday season begins, grinding to an absolute halt by mid December. The result at the end of the year – there is NOT a viable plan in place!

So what’s wrong with this you ask? Well to do it right (wrong is not an option) it takes the better part of six to eight months worth of actual activity. You do the math … the seasonal approach does not work! I’ve passed this observation on to my peers and clients for many years, with no real solution offered up. The concept is fairly straight forward, the process is quite detailed – the end result is a viable business continuity management plan that deals with – crisis management, business continuation and disaster recovery. If you are (or the boss is) serious about staying in business following a major business disruption there is only one approach – a serious, on-going continuous approach to the development of a viable business continuity plan. Read this case study about a credit union that I helped develop a business continuity plan, after thorough analysis of specific risks and exposures, and continue to augment that plan today with ongoing maintenance to ensure it’s successful execution when necessary.

As Always, I would not want to be the one to tell the boss following a serious disruption…”We’ve been working on our business continuity plan for a while, but we just haven’t got it done yet.” How does one fix this? I know this is an issue for many of you… let me hear from you. I’ve had almost 600 readers access my blog since I started this thing in April. There are a lot of you out there that access it and read it, but significantly fewer that offer their opinions in response. So as I print my observations, I welcome yours in return!

Would Your Business Continuity Plan Work? The Need to Exercise Your Plan

What mechanism do you use to determine the viability of your business continuity plan? Do you exercise all the elements of your plan? Do you exercise the response, resumption and recovery strategies you’ve defined? If you are like 60% of those that have not taken the time to develop / document a business continuity plan you do not.

There are many stories about organizations that have taken the time to exercise their plans, only to discover that they would NOT have worked at time of a major business disruption. The exercises often revealed that the strategies, polices, practices and procedures were not adequate to allow them to respond to an event, resume their critical business functions and actually recover their business over time. The end result would most likely be something other than business as usual or no business at all. Read this successful story about AT&T in response to Hurricane Gustav and in preparation for Hurricane Hanna. 

I can not stress enough the need to exercise or test your plan at least annually. I suggest that even if you take the time to conduct an exercise – take the time to ask yourself at least several times a year “what has changed in our business and would our plan still work?” Here are some questions that need to be answered and only a formal exercise will draw out the answer, whether it’s one you want to hear or not 

• Does your staff demonstrate adequate knowledge of the plan?
• Have specific individuals been assigned specific responsibilities?
• Have the resources (people / places / things) you would need to respond to the event and to resume / recover your business been identified. Have you set them aside?
• Where would you go to resume your business?
• What about technology?
• Have you identified critical vendors or contacts you need to reach following an event?
• Have you adequately documented the above? A quick note – tribal knowledge is great, but in the absence of the individual that possesses that knowledge your shot at putting a viable recovery solution in place at time of event will fail. That is well proven!

I use a simple tabletop exercise, a building fire, to lead folks through their plan logic. You’d be surprised what you can learn from a simple sit down, a one to two hour get together playing out a fire event that lasts an extended period and ultimately ends up in the search for a new location from which to conduct business. California is testing their earthquake DR plans, in response to the Chino earthquake last month. Although there was minimal damage, it served as a wake-up call to emergency planners. This article explains the steps they are taking to prepare for the next quake.

If you have a plan and / or conduct such an exercise, make sure that all the gaps that are identified (and there will be some, if not many) are placed on someone’s action item list to be resolved. Timelines for resolution should be identified and monitored for completion.

We’ve all heard the adage that “organizations simply don’t know what they don’t know.” Therefore, I strongly suggest you exercise your plan until you feel as if “you got it right” and that you do this periodically to ensure your plan remains viable.

Take the time to test & exercise your plan – I dare you!