The Manager S Guide To Simple Strategic Service Oriented Business Continuity

The Manager’s Guide to Simple, Strategic, Service-Oriented Business Continuity

You have the knowledge and skill to create a workable Business Continuity Management (BCM) program – but too often, your projects are stalled while you attempt to get the right information from the right person. Rachelle Loyear experienced these struggles for years before she successfully revamped and reinvented her company’s BCM program. In The Manager’s Guide to Simple, Strategic, Service-Oriented Business Continuity, she takes you through the practical steps to get your program back on track. Rachelle Loyear understands your situation well. Her challenge was to manage BCM in a large enterprise that required hundreds of BC plans to be created and updated. The frustrating reality she faced was that subject matter experts in various departments held the critical information she needed, but few were willing to write their parts of the plan. She tried and failed using all the usual methods to educate and motivate – and even threaten – departments to meet her deadlines. Finally, she decided there had to be a better way. The result was an incredibly successful BCM program that was adopted by BCM managers in other companies. She calls it “The Three S’s of BCM Success,” which can be summarized as: Simple – Strategic – Service-Oriented. Loyear’s approach is easy and intuitive, considering the BCM discipline from the point of view of the people in your organization who are tasked to work with you on building the plans and program. She found that most people prefer: Simple solutions when they are faced with something new and different. Strategic use of their time, making their efforts pay off. Service to be provided, lightening their part of the load while still meeting all the basic requirements. These tactics explain why the 3S program works. It helps you, it helps your program, and it helps your program partners. Loyear says, “If you follow the ‘Three S’ philosophy, the number of plans you need to document will be fewer, and the plans will be simpler and easier to produce. I’ve seen this method succeed repeatedly when the traditional method of handing a business leader a form to fill out or a piece of software to use has failed to produce quality plans in a timely manner.” In The Manager’s Guide to Simple, Strategic, Sevice-Oriented Business Continuity, Loyear shows you how to: Completely change your approach to the problems of “BCM buy-in.” Find new ways to engage and support your BCM program partners and subject matter experts. Develop easier-to-use policies, procedures, and plans. Improve your overall relationships with everyone involved in your BCM program. Craft a program that works around the roadblocks rather than running headlong into them.

The Manager’s Guide to Business Continuity Exercises

You designed your Business Continuity Plan to keep your business in business regardless of the forces of man and nature. But how do you know that the plan really works? Few companies can afford the recommended full-scale exercises several times a year. In The Manager’s Guide to Business Continuity Exercises, Jim Burtles, an internationally known expert, details the options for conducting a range of tests and exercises to keep your plan effective and up to date. Your challenge is to maintain a good and effective plan in the face of changing circumstances and limited budgets. If your situation is like that in most companies, you really cannot depend on the results of last year’s test or exercise of the plan. People tend to forget, lose confidence, lose interest, or even be replaced by other people who were not involved in your original planning. Jim Burtles explains: “You cannot have any real confidence in your plans and procedures until they have been fully tested...Exercises are the only way we can be sure that the people will be able to interpret the plans and procedures correctly within the requisite timeframe under difficult circumstances.” As you do your job in this constantly shifting context, Jim Burtles helps you to: • Differentiate between an “exercise” and a “test” – and see the value of each in your BC program. • Understand the different types of plans and identify the people who need to be involved in exercises and tests for each. • Use the “Five-Stage Growth Path” – from desktop to walkthrough to full-scale exercise -- to conduct gradual testing, educate personnel, foster capability, and build confidence. • Create a variety of unusual scenario plot-lines that will keep up everyone’s interest. • Identify the eight main elements in developing and delivering a successful BC exercise. • Select and prepare a “delivery team” and a “response team” for your exercise. • Make sure everyone understands the “rules of engagement.” • Use the lessons learned from exercises and tests to audit, update, and maintain the plan. You are well aware that a host of problems may crop up in any kind of company-wide project. These problems can range from basic logistics like time and place, to non-support from executives and managers, to absenteeism, to the weather, to participants forgetting their lines. Throughout the book, Burtles uses his decades of experience working with companies like yours to give you useful examples, case studies, and down-to-earth advice to help you handle the unexpected and work toward the results you are looking for.

Manager's Guide to Simple, Strategic, Service-Oriented Business Continuity