Examine a business process from your area of responsibility, assess the consequences of interruption and develop a recovery plan. Agree priorities and resources with other participants and revise your contribution after feedback from another professional role.
When a central process fails, several departments may compete for the same replacement resources. In this planned two-day workshop, you begin with a business impact analysis: jointly determine how interruption consequences develop over time and which services should be restored first. Map resources and dependencies, compare continuity options and propose a recovery sequence.
In the shared disruption case, two priority processes need the same replacement team. Agree the sequence, develop a limited alternative for the other process and work through handover and recovery. Each participant explains an individual contribution and revises it after feedback from another professional role.
Take the agreed analysis and recovery plan forward as a basis for organisational approval and initial testing. Information from your organisation is the starting point; confidential details can be anonymised or replaced with an example case.
What you will work on
Assess time-dependent consequences of interruption to a business process
Connect recovery priorities with resources and dependencies
Handle competing demands without allocating the same resource twice
Who it is for
Leadership teams and business unit heads
Owners of critical business processes
Business continuity and operations managers
Topics
Scoped business impact analysis
Time-dependent consequences and priorities
Minimum resources and shared constraints
Continuity and recovery options
Testing, revision and preparation for organisational approval
Your result
Your plan, worked through together in the tabletop exercise, records interruption consequences, replacement resources, assignments and the agreed recovery sequence.
Prerequisites
A working knowledge of the selected process and its main interfaces is required; BCM certification or detailed knowledge of a standard is not a prerequisite. The relevant process and resource owners should take part and have access to existing information on services and dependencies. An anonymised or example case can be used.
Format and approach
Two planned in-person days with cross-functional group work and individual contributions. All tasks will also be prepared so they can be run with paper materials and analogue boards. The disruption exercise is a tabletop review, not a technical failover test. The approach is not tied to a single BCM standard, and the workshop does not include certification against one.
Create a first continuity plan for a critical process in your organisation. Define the minimum service needed during a disruption, its dependencies and the steps for recovery. The plan records responsibilities, assumptions and open decisions for discussion with the process owner.
What needs to recover first after a disruption? You examine the services in an area and explain the recovery order to colleagues in operations, IT and finance. You create a business impact analysis for your organisation or a course case.
Plan your organisation’s business continuity programme: decide which goals come first, who will do the work and what resources are available. You also plan how to involve staff and review progress. The result is an annual programme with assignments, staff hours and a procedure for a rehearsal.