How to write a Business Continuity Plan
A Step-by-Step Guide
A good way to visualise a business continuity plan is to think of it as a framework, rather than a huge document that describes a detailed process to be followed. Real-life experience shows us that these gargantuan documents are of little use during a crisis and cumbersome to maintain. Those responsible for for managing incidents need information that is concise and can be accessed quickly. That's why effective business continuity plan development initiative generates several different types of document, some which help later stages of development, some which are used for reference purposes, some which demonstrate to third parties that you have robust plans AND maintenance processes and others that provide support and guidance when disaster strikes. We have described below some examples of the most important templates that form a comprehensive business continuity plan and you'll see how each of these are developed, watch our guided tour of our business continuity plan development video. If you feel that these templates could help you, all of these templates - and more - are included in the business continuity plan templates pack which you can securely download from this site.
There's a quick overview of all sections of our business continuity plan template below, and for more more information there's also video walkthrough of the business continuity plan template here
This is the initial stage of business continuity plan development. Some call it a Business Impact Assessment (or "BIA"), others may refer to it as a risk assessment. What we decide to call it is less important than what this step actually does - it's the process of identifying the most important activities that need to be kept running to ensure staff safety, maintain customer goodwill and assure the survival of your organisation. Once you have identified what is important you can then start to consider what your overall capabilities are to meet these priorities, especially in terms of people, premises, IT and other resources. A BIA template is included in the business continuity plan template download
A critical part of this stage of business continuity plan development is understanding the organisations overall ability to recovering IT systems, establishing alternative workplace arrangements and acquiring alternative equipment will determine whether or not your organisation has the intrinsic ability to recover from a major operational disruption. This stage draws in colleagues from the areas of the organisation that deliver these core capabilities and captures their feedback on what they can currently provide and whether this is sufficient to meet the organisations business continuity priorities. This part of the BIA template stage captures this information, supporting comparison of recovery priorities to current capabilities & resources. It's a separate tab in the Excel BIA spreadsheet template included in the business continuity plan template download
How to Write a Business Continuity Plan
Step 1 - Assessing Priorities & Capabilities
How to Write a Business Continuity Plan
Step 2 - Developing Incident Response & Recovery Plans
This is where we get down into the "nitty gritty" of how the organisations activities are restored after certain types of disaster. Having established what can be done in terms of IT systems, alternative working arrangements and equipment, we get to the stage of defining actions plans for specific activities, deciding who does what where and when and who they need to communicate and collaborate with. These "plans" are working documents that describe key actions, team members, roles and relationships. . A template for this stage is included in the business continuity plan template download
How to Write a Business Continuity Plan
Step 3 - Establish a Communications Framework
A comprehensive communications plan is an essential and critical part of any organisations business continuity plan. A communications plan needs to cover all parties that may be affected by an incident affecting your organisation. While risk assessments and response provide sound basis for recovering from an incident, the Communications Plan ensures everyone in the organisation is aware of "what's going on" while external communications preserves your organisation's reputation with customers and other third parties. This part of the plan includes suggested internal and external parties to be considered and communications channels to be used. Our business continuity plan template includes a formatted communications framework with suggested internal and external parties and typical communications channels used.
How to Write a Business Continuity Plan
Step 4 - Plan Maintenance & Assurance
This final stage of business continuity plan development focusses on keeping your plan fit for for purpose. The business continuity plan template download includes a prepopulated management framework and assurance programme - which is already compliant with the ISO 22301 standard for business continuity management - to ensuring that your plan remains current and will stand up to any third party audit review
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