What is Plan Development?

This chapter provides an overview of the entire plan development process, including the implementation stages, detailed tasks, and expected deliverables.

1. Definition

According to BCMPedia, Plan Development is a phase within the BCM planning methodology.

It determines the procedures for notifying the right people and assessing the operational impact.

It also develops specific steps to minimise the risk of an outage and restore normal operations after the outage. The output from this step is the BC Plan.

2. Tasks

The tasks to complete in the plan development phase include:

Designing and developing the model BC Plan documentation.
Determining the setup of the functional responsibilities of the recovery teams.
The identification of members for each recovery team.
The development of specific procedures for each recovery team.
Training staff on using BC specialized software and (if necessary) BC Plan templates.
Reviewing and editing (based on an agreed structure) the plans submitted by the business units to ensure that the documents are consistent, comprehensive and complete.

3. What Does Plan Development Entail?

In summary, the entire process involves the following stages:

Determination of the organisation of the BC Plan document

Designing and developing the BC Plan template.
Determining the recovery organization.

Conducting a BC Plan writing workshop to guide plan writers

Completion of plan template by individual BU BCM Coordinators.

Finalisation of the BC Plan production

Validation by BU BCM Coordinators and Heads of Business Units of the content of plans for completeness and coverage.
Heads of respective business units will do the sign-off.

4. Key Elements of Plan Development Phase

Understanding and Defining the Objectives

While there are several ways to manage a crisis, the order of priority outlined in the model plan templates is considered the most appropriate to meet your business needs.

Therefore, the Organization's BCM Coordinator must understand and define the objectives for producing a structured plan and the professional expectations for implementing the BC Plan.

Determining the Scope

It is important to clearly define the scope of the recovery plan document produced in a crisis so that time and energy are not wasted recovering non-critical items.

Identifying the Resources Required

Confirming that all the necessary resources will be made available is necessary to ensure that the plan document is completed within the shortest possible time.

Developing Model BC Plan Template

The main components of a typical BC Plan are:

Reduce

Reduction and mitigation.

Respond

Immediate response steps.

Recover

Restoration of time-sensitive critical business functions.

Resume

Resumption of time-sensitive critical functions with expanded recovery operations.

Restore

Restoration of damaged or destroyed infrastructure.

Return

Return to normal.

The Organisation BCM Coordinator will design the templates using this logical BC Planning (BCP) workflow.

Arrange Training in the Usage of Plan Template

As the complete set of “Model BC Plan Template” (refer to Sample BC Plan) covers several scenarios, the plans you are working with will be condensed and customized into a “Model BC Plan”, which directly reflects the organization’s typical business environment.

The support and training can be in-house or provided by an external agency.

The trainers should be given sufficient notice so the training can occur immediately before writing the BC Plan.

Finalising the Timetable

The timing for completing the BC Plan would have been stated in the overall project schedule agreed to by the Executive Management at the beginning of the BCP Project.

Therefore, the BC Plan document should be completed as quickly as possible to prevent slippage in these later stages.

Developing and Reviewing the Plan

The plan must be written and reviewed to ensure that it:

Includes all approved recovery strategies.
Covers all critical business functions identified in the BIA phase.
Does not contain any duplication.
Reflects all the actions that are to be taken.
Confirms approval of the estimated expenditure for specific items.

Presenting the Final Plan for Approval

Once the procedure is completed, the Executive Management must approve the final plan. These are the steps:

Sign-off on the individual plans by the respective heads of business units.
Distribute the consolidated plan to the Executive Management.
Make a presentation to the Executive Management.
Introduce the next phase “Testing and Exercising” to Executive Management.

5. Expected Deliverables

The expected deliverables at each stage of a typical plan development phase are based on the development of the following:

Grouping and structure of plans for the entire organization.
Model BC Plan template.
BC organization structure.
Completed and approved a set of BC Plans.

Reference

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

Extracted from "Chapter 2: What is Plan Development?"

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