Develop the Plan [3]: Plan Writing

Written by Rose Lam | May 2, 2019 8:04:14 AM

Plan development is the phase in the BCM Planning Methodology following BC Strategy [or Crisis Strategy] development.

As mentioned earlier, there are three levels of planning:

implementation plans
procedure development, and
plan writing.

In this final stage, the plan gets put together in the form of a document.

Plan Writing

Before documentation, it is important to first structure the plan such that it is not only comprehensive in its content but also readable and easily referenced.

Business Continuity Plan

Aim to make the plan concise and action-oriented; avoid loading it with policy statements, or risk assessments and BIA data.

I like to section my plan into 3 parts

Part A introduces the plan, how to use it, and information that affects the organization at large, e.g. locations evacuation assembly areas and alternate sites.
Part B details the corporate procedures chronologically, making references to other policies and procedures, if necessary.
Part C is where individual business units will document their recovery procedures, specific to their critical business functions.

Every business unit plan will have a common Part A and Part B, but with a Part C specific for that particular business unit. Different organizations, depending on their size and structure, may format their plans differently. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this - the important thing to remember is to document the plan as appropriate to the organization.

Crisis Management and Crisis Communication Plan

The structure of both CM and CC is divided into 2 parts.

Part A Introduction to Crisis Management or Communication Plan introduces the plan, how to use it, and information that affects the organization, such as type of crisis scenarios and structure of the team with reference to the BC, CM, CC and DR teams.
Part B Crisis Scenario Action List is where CM or CC unit document their actions steps and response procedures, specific to the crisis scenarios

Making the Plan Realistic

I like to encourage planners to be fairly detailed in the writing of their plans. I believe that by documenting procedures in detail, one is able to better visualize the process and detect inconsistencies and misalignments in time and space. The final plan is likely to be more realistic. Having said that, we want to be careful about not over-documenting the plan, such that it becomes voluminous and unwieldy, losing its effectiveness in a disaster.