business-continuity

What this skill does

# Business Continuity Planning

Develop and maintain business continuity capabilities including Business Impact Analysis, communication plans, recovery procedures, and testing schedules for organizational resilience.

## When to Use

- Developing a formal Business Continuity Plan (BCP) for the organization
- Conducting a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to prioritize recovery efforts
- Establishing communication plans for crisis scenarios
- Defining recovery procedures for critical business processes
- Scheduling and conducting BCP exercises and tests
- Meeting compliance requirements for continuity planning (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP)

## BCP Framework

```yaml
bcp_phases:
  1_governance:
    actions:
      - Obtain executive sponsorship and funding
      - Assign BCP coordinator and team
      - Define BCP scope and policy
      - Establish BCP committee with cross-functional representation
    deliverables:
      - BCP policy statement
      - BCP team charter and roster
      - Scope document

  2_analysis:
    actions:
      - Conduct Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
      - Perform risk assessment for continuity threats
      - Identify critical business processes and dependencies
      - Determine recovery priorities and resource requirements
    deliverables:
      - BIA report
      - Risk assessment report
      - Critical process inventory

  3_strategy:
    actions:
      - Select recovery strategies for each critical process
      - Identify alternate work arrangements (remote, alternate site)
      - Define technology recovery strategies (DR plan)
      - Establish vendor and supply chain contingencies
    deliverables:
      - Recovery strategy document
      - Technology recovery plan
      - Alternate site arrangements

  4_plan_development:
    actions:
      - Write detailed recovery procedures
      - Develop communication plans (internal and external)
      - Create emergency response procedures
      - Document roles, responsibilities, and contact information
    deliverables:
      - Business Continuity Plan document
      - Communication plan
      - Emergency response procedures
      - Contact lists and call trees

  5_testing:
    actions:
      - Develop test plan and schedule
      - Conduct exercises (tabletop, functional, full-scale)
      - Evaluate results and identify gaps
      - Update plans based on lessons learned
    deliverables:
      - Test plan
      - Exercise reports
      - Updated BCP based on findings

  6_maintenance:
    actions:
      - Review and update BCP annually (minimum)
      - Update after significant organizational changes
      - Refresh BIA when business processes change
      - Maintain training and awareness program
    deliverables:
      - Annual BCP review record
      - Updated BIA (if changes occurred)
      - Training completion records
```

## Business Impact Analysis Template

```yaml
bia_template:
  process_assessment:
    process_name: ""
    process_owner: ""
    department: ""
    description: ""

    criticality_classification:
      mission_critical:
        max_tolerable_downtime: "0-4 hours"
        description: "Failure causes immediate, severe impact to customers or revenue"
        examples:
          - Payment processing
          - Authentication and authorization
          - Core API serving customer requests
          - Order fulfillment

      essential:
        max_tolerable_downtime: "4-24 hours"
        description: "Failure causes significant degradation but not complete loss"
        examples:
          - Customer support systems
          - Reporting and dashboards
          - Email and notifications
          - Billing and invoicing

      important:
        max_tolerable_downtime: "1-3 days"
        description: "Failure causes inconvenience and workarounds are available"
        examples:
          - Internal collaboration tools
          - Analytics and BI platforms
          - HR self-service systems
          - Knowledge base

      non_essential:
        max_tolerable_downtime: "3-7 days"
        description: "Failure has minimal operational impact"
        examples:
          - Development and test environments
          - Training platforms
          - Archive systems

    impact_categories:
      financial:
        revenue_loss_per_hour: ""
        penalty_or_fine_risk: ""
        recovery_cost_estimate: ""

      operational:
        affected_employees: ""
        affected_customers: ""
        workaround_available: "yes/no"
        workaround_description: ""

      reputational:
        customer_visibility: "high/medium/low"
        media_attention_risk: "high/medium/low"
        regulatory_reporting_required: "yes/no"

      legal_regulatory:
        compliance_impact: ""
        contractual_sla_breach: "yes/no"
        sla_penalty_details: ""

    dependencies:
      technology:
        - system: ""
          rto: ""
          rpo: ""
          dr_strategy: ""
      people:
        - role: ""
          minimum_staff: ""
          remote_capable: "yes/no"
      vendors:
        - vendor: ""
          service: ""
          sla: ""
          alternative: ""
      facilities:
        - location: ""
          alternative: ""

    recovery_requirements:
      rto: ""
      rpo: ""
      minimum_recovery_level: "Description of minimum acceptable service"
      full_recovery_target: "Time to full normal operations"
```

## Communication Plan

```yaml
communication_plan:
  activation_criteria:
    - Event affecting multiple critical systems
    - Physical facility unavailable
    - Pandemic or workforce availability crisis
    - Major vendor/partner outage
    - Cybersecurity incident with operational impact

  internal_communication:
    executive_notification:
      who: "CEO, CTO, CFO, VP Engineering, VP Operations"
      when: "Within 15 minutes of BCP activation"
      method: "Phone call (primary), SMS (secondary)"
      message_template: |
        BUSINESS CONTINUITY EVENT ACTIVATED
        Incident: [Brief description]
        Impact: [Systems/processes affected]
        Status: [Current state]
        Next update: [Time]
        Bridge call: [Number/link]

    team_notification:
      who: "All affected department leads and their teams"
      when: "Within 30 minutes of BCP activation"
      method: "Slack/Teams (primary), Email (secondary), SMS (tertiary)"
      message_template: |
        BCP ACTIVATED - [Event Type]
        What happened: [Description]
        What is affected: [Systems/services]
        What to do: [Immediate actions for your team]
        Status updates: [Channel/frequency]
        Questions: Contact [BCP coordinator]

    all_staff_notification:
      who: "All employees"
      when: "Within 1 hour of BCP activation"
      method: "Email, Slack/Teams announcement, intranet"
      content: "Situation summary, impact on work, expectations"

    status_updates:
      frequency: "Every 2 hours during active event, daily after stabilization"
      channel: "Dedicated Slack channel, email distribution list"
      content: "Current status, actions taken, next steps, timeline"

  external_communication:
    customers:
      who: "Affected customers"
      when: "Within 2 hours of BCP activation (if customer-facing impact)"
      method: "Status page update, email, in-app notification"
      message_template: |
        We are currently experiencing [issue description].
        Impact: [What customers may notice]
        Status: We are actively working to resolve this.
        Updates: Follow our status page at status.example.com
        ETA: [Estimated resolution time or "investigating"]

    regulatory:
      who: "Applicable regulatory bodies"
      when: "Per regulatory requirements (e.g., 72 hours for GDPR breach)"
      method: "Formal notification per regulatory procedure"

    media:
      who: "Press inquiries"
      when: "Only if media attention occurs"
      method: "Prepared statement through communications team"