Welcome back to our Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Planning Blog.

Welcome back to our Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Planning Blog.

And, welcome to 2011!!!

Here we are at the beginning of a new year! Beginnings are exciting aren't they? New Year! New Projects! Most important... New Budget! Much as I wish it could be otherwise, nothing happens without money. If your experience is different, let me know.

Anyway, now we have money to spend let's jump right into that Business Continuity Planning project we started looking at last year. But you know, it's been awhile so a little review wouldn't hurt.

Business Continuity Planning includes:
• Ensuring business survival by reducing the impact of a disaster or major failure
• Reducing the vulnerability and risk to the business by effective risk analysis and risk management
• Preventing the loss of Customer and User confidence.

The basic stages of the Business Continuity Life-cycle are:

Stage 1 – Initiation → Getting the ball rolling.

Stage 2 – Define requirements and strategy → Speculate what might impact our ability to do business. Determine what that would cost the company. Decide when we need to be back in business. Get a handle on what resources we need to get back in business. Come up with a somewhat generic plan for getting back in business.

Stage 3 – Implementation → Do the work of building the plan and implement required new capabilities.

Stage 4 – Operational Management → On going care and feeding of the plan and associated capabilities.


Okay!! Now that we all remember what we're doing let's get right to it.

Wait!! Time out. Pop Quiz! And no cheating by looking ahead.

What is the first major project task we should work on?

Storage Management guys want to get right into backup and recovery, mirroring, offsite storage, data deduplication... better order more disk first.

The Executive with the Airline magazine in his briefcase knows cloud computing is the solution to this and a few other issues... Budda Bing Budda Boom (sorry ESM).

Systems Management guys want more virtualization, standardization, consolidation, data centre duplication... have to work with the Hardware guy to get more servers first.

The HR ladies (more often than not) know that people are the key... add that skills inventory to the staff database first.

Configuration and Capacity Management guys (Hardware, Software, Network and Application guys for many of you) want room to grow and lists of everything... should have spent more time on the CMDB (Configuration Management Data Base) last year.

Middle Management (no I'm not talking about weight) know they better get going before the budget is taken away... maybe hire a consultant first ;).

As tempting as all those suggestions are, the first task you have to complete is to legitimize, institutionalize and secure/protect the funding for your Business Continuity Planning project.

I know, $1 a pound words but what does it mean?

For those of you who haven't already guessed, it means:
 you need a Champion at the highest levels of the company
 having a tested and working Business Continuity Capability must be seen as critical to business success
 Business Continuity budget dollars cannot be in the discretionary part of the budget.

For all of you folks who would rather roll-up your sleeves and “git-r-done” try to remember what happened to the discretionary projects last year. When money gets tight discretionary projects get cut and even non-discretionary projects can be pared back.

Take some time to figure out who is your best candidate for a Champion. You might think the CIO is the natural choice but depending on your industry and the personalities involved it could just as easily be the top Financial or Operations person. Chances of success are greatly enhanced if your Champion comes from the Board of Directors or equivalent level.

Having found your prospective Champion you have to figure out how to get them on board in a big way. Some people are motivated by technical excellence, some by competitive advantage while others are driven by fiduciary responsibilities and regulatory compliance. Whatever your Champion's sweet spot is, be sure to emphasize the appropriate aspect of the project when you present it.

I can hear the objections already... How the heck am I supposed to know who would make a good Champion or what their “sweet” spot is?!? The answer is simple... you ask.

If you are in a big company ask your boss or other successful project managers. It's unlikely you're the first person who's had to pitch a new project. Somebody already has the answers to your questions.

If you are in a small company you may already know who is interested in what and you may have direct access to the guys who make the decisions so you can work on them directly to sell the project.

The great thing about having the right Champion is that you will have support to get on with the work as well as someone to run interference when the budget appropriation needs to be increased.

The potential downside is that you will have someone high in the organization not only interested in your project but expecting you to deliver great things. That's really good news if you do well!

I hope you are finding this interesting. Next time we'll move on to the next stage.

If you run a business that makes use of computers or data and you need help with Backup and Recovery, IT Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity Planning... pick up the phone and call 226-220-0472, we can help you.

Fred Spitzig