A Guide to Business Continuity Planning

2 Project FoundationINITIAL ASSESSMENTMany times a company will want to understand where they are with regard toBusiness Continuity ‘‘Best Practices’’. By looking at a few key indicators, one canassess the viability of their organization’s Business Continuity Planning program.BCP EVALUATIONIn order to evaluate the effectiveness and viability of an organization’s BCP structure,you must gain an understanding of what has been put in place to mitigatedisaster risks. As an overall indicator of the BCP structure, examine and evaluatethe existing business continuity plan.The first thing that you will want to determine is if a Business Continuity Plancurrently exists. If a plan does not exist, then you have finished your evaluation. Ifthe plan does exist, then there are further assessments that will be required todetermine its effectiveness.The following are techniques used to determine a plan’s effectiveness:● Determine if the plan has been revised within the last year.● A plan should have team members that are assigned certain responsibilitiesduring a recovery operation. Randomly select several team members and askthem if they know what their responsibilities are during a recovery situation.● Select samplings of staff members listed in the plan and verify their homecontact and emergency contact information (generally you will find this to beonly 60% accurate).● Determine if members of the senior management staff are included in the recoveryplan (when real disasters occur, senior staff members tend to take control of