Due to limitations in resources, and also as a matter of better management of the project, organisations often multiple plans for different disaster scenarios, as opposed to having a super plan that can handle any type of disaster.
Key planning scenarios help determine the focus of the business continuity plan to be developed. It goes without saying that plans should be developed first for the threats that present the highest risks, and hence greatest urgency, to the organisation, before moving on the threats with lower risks.
Typically, we look at two attributes of key planning scenarios:
The disaster scenario focuses the plan on a class of disasters, such as denial of access (e.g. fire), loss of manpower (e.g. pandemic), IT failures or supply chain disruption. It tells you what type of BCP you should be developing,
The planning time horizon bounds the effective timeframe of the plan. Should we be planning for a 3-day outage, or a 3-month outage.
Both require very different strategies and effort of execution. Together, the disaster scenario and the planning time horizon help clarify the scope, and in turn, the complexity of the Business Continuity Planning (BCP) project to be embarked upon.
The table below depicts the types and characteristics of the scenarios that should be drawn up and examples. The key step in this risk assessment exercise is to select the specific scenario that will result in the highest level of disruption to the Critical Business Functions (CBFs).
|
Characteristics |
Types |
|
Severe in magnitude |
Major monetary loss. |
|
Result in severe impairment to the organization’s ability to conduct business |
Inability to receive customers’ telephone calls. |
|
Have a high likelihood of occurrence |
Once every few days. |
|
Occur at the worst possible time |
During peak period. |
|
Involve one or several of the identified risks |
Wide-scale power blackout. |
There is a school of thoughts that emphasized that all scenarios should be developed for your business continuity plan. Given the limited resources and time allocation should you be starting this project, the key is to focus on the scenario that matters most.
However, scenarios that were not planned for may happened while this project is being implemented, it is part of managing risk and understanding your risk appetite.
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