Step 2: Research Your Work

IC_More_Step 2 Whether you have some BCM background or are a newcomer, there are many websites that will get you up to speed quickly. In my view, the most useful are the sites for the few most widely used publications in the field,

Disaster Recovery Journal
- www.drj.com
Contingency Planning and Management
- www.contingencyplanning.com
Continuity Insights
- www.continuityinsights.com
Continuity Central
- www.continuitycentral.com

The Disaster Recovery Journal and Continuity Central websites contain articles aimed specifically at helping Organization BCM Coordinators who want to learn the fundamental BCP principles.

If this is a new professional area for you, spending a few hours reading those articles should help make you much more knowledgeable in a short time. You may also want to attend a BCM training course.

There are many organizations, ranging from international to local, where you can network with your peers. Look for their websites, including chat rooms, using search engines with keywords such as BC or DR. These knowledge-based sites contain many articles, profiles and case history of plans, and BCP products, services, and resources.

Learn to Speak the BCP Language

Like any other area of specialization, BCP has its own terms. The list of terms found in BCMPedia www.bcmpedia.org is the commonly used one.

Do Your Research

I have often found that an Organization BCM Coordinator need not be an expert in BCP. However, he or she must have strong project management skills and working knowledge in all the disciplines involved in the BCP project, in order to communicate effectively with each of the BCP team members and to direct their individual efforts.

There is no magic solution to this requirement: it is simply a matter of doing your homework. Each of the disciplines must be researched and studied in sufficient detail to attain a level of comfort in dealing with each of the BCP team members.

Do Not Reinvent the Wheel!

There is no requirement for you to build a BC plan from scratch. Many established plan models have been built and are available for study and use as the foundation for your own BC plan. Alternatively, you can purchase a BCP writing software package and use it to develop your BC plan. Pick the one that most closely matches your needs. This will help you make sure that your BC plan is consistent with current practices, and you do not leave out really important parts.

I am a strong advocate of using BCP software. However, I have a concern when organizations opt to have the software as the panacea to successfully implement their BC plans. Doing the necessary research and all the necessary homework is essential before exploring to purchase such software.

Approaches to BCP

Often at BCP conferences and seminars, speakers criticize the traditional approaches to BCP as technologically directed because such approaches emphasize only the need to recover the organization's technological and communications platforms such as the mainframes, data communications, and networks. The “right” approach is to have corporate-wide BCP strategies, which are driven by the need to ensure continued support of the organization's critical business functions and should not be technologically directed.

There are great discrepancies in the implementation of BCP in the world. For example, the Executive Management of some organizations in Asia still insists on the traditional technology directed approach. The situation is further worsened by the requirement of regulators but the perception and focus are gradually changing, especially after the September 11th terrorist attack and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic and now, COVID-19.

IC_TIPS My caution to Organization BCM Coordinators is that your approach will be viewed as being wrong if it differs from the expectations of your Executive Management. The key is to educate and get them to agree with your BCP methodology prior to the start of the BCM project.

As the cost of telecommunication and storage media becomes inexpensive, the trend for BCP will move towards the cloud, mirroring and remote storage strategies. This requirement will be made necessary as the Recovery Time Objective5 (RTO) becomes so “small” and it will be intolerable for any organization to use traditional alternate recovery strategies.

BCM Project Management Steps Click to find out more about the detailed requirement for each steps
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Reference

Goh, M. H. (2021). Managing Your Business Continuity Planning Project. Business Continuity Management Planning Series (3rd ed.). Singapore: GMH Pte Ltd.

Extracted from "Chapter 6: Step 2: Research Your Work"

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