Greg Latiak would like to welcome you to the Technology Strategists, Inc. newsletter.

One of the things that has puzzled me over the years is why 'Business Continuity' planning has such an uphill struggle for attention from senior management. After all, in the simplest of terms, the focus of business continuity is not all that dissimilar from steering the company ship. The difference seems to be that business continuity planning assumes there are rocks under those waves and that not every wind will be good -- and it is the job of the business continuity planner to develop strategies and implement plans to help their company navigate those less than pleasant surprises. How much more powerful would the impact of preparedness goals if they came down as part of the strategic plan rather than being pushed up from below.  What makes this even more ironic is that by treating business continuity planning as separate from daily operations, the firm may be choosing the high cost route for what capabilities they do create. A firm with multiple locations might better use those strategically to increase organizational resilience.

Business metrics are a helpful means of obtaining insight into the health of your business. A simplistic way of looking at the state of one's business continuity program might be to look at the extent of coverage -- for external customers and internal functions by the existing (or future) business plan. Then consider how long it would (realistically) take to recover those plan-supported functions relative to the ideal recovery time objective. Or even more dismally, evaluate how long it takes for changes in the organization structure or technology infrastructure to propagate into the plan. One might put this information in a three (or four) dimensional graph -- with a 'we are here' marker and a 'need to be' marker. The distance between these points could be considered a relative measure of effort. With a bit of work (or help) this could even be useful as a management metric for reporting on the progress of implementing a continuity program. And even better as input to the corporate strategic plan. (Look for further discussion in a future newsletter on using enterprise architectures as tools for planning change. The conceptual architecture frameworks for 'here' and 'need to be' can identify what organizational changes might be required.)

What must be considered is that establishing a business continuity program is not about setting up some spare servers in a room across town. But rather, it is establishing a family of contingent plans to enable management at all levels to serenely steer their ship through rough waters and around obstacles. It is a business planning exercise  supported by technology -- as the firms that survived 9/11 learned. It is always about people and how their relationships are organized, structured and supported. And how to make most effective use of the resources employed to respond to the business challenges faced (foreseen and otherwise) is always the responsibility of management.

This newsletter is distributed through Yahoo Groups. If you are not currently a subscriber and would like to receive this newsletter in the future, please click on subscribe. We respect your privacy and do not wish to be viewed as yet another SPAM irritation. If you do not wish to receive this in the future, please click on unsubscribe.