Where Does Business Continuity Planning Reside in Your Organizational Food Chain?

At last count, the team at IT-Lifeline and I have been involved in 33 different business continuity planning engagements with different clients. A common thread regarding the success of those engagements has been the level to which the client planner reported inside the organization and who sponsored the planning process. The topic of who owns BCP in an organization has been a long standing issue. One thing that is obvious from my perspective is that the higher up the BCP owner is, the more clout, the greater success in terms of plan content and thus greater the plan’s viability.

So who has responsibility for BCP in your organization and to whom do they report? In a recent study that I read, a group of participants suggested 50/50 that whoever had responsibility for Risk Management or the CEO should take on that risk. An interesting observation given that the roots of BCP are IT-Based. All participants agreed that whoever ended up with the task needed the endorsement and involvement of the entire C-suite.

Business continuity planning as I’ve stated in prior blogs and presenations, ain’t what it used to be. Business continuity can no longer be “assigned” as a project and ignored by those above. My experience indicates that businesss continuity planning is not an information technology responsibility. When it is IT driven, which happens three times more than any other group in an organization today, the process often bogs down and fails.

Business continuity planning is a “business” responsibility. It must involve the senior executives, the IT group and the rest of the business. Anything less usually results in an ineffective plan that would not work at time-of-event. Where does your plan stand given its sponsorship and involvement?