Professional Practices of BCI GPG: Design Stage

As you are aware of the below six stages of Business Continuity Management aimed to build organisation resilience by BCI with a framework Good Practice Guidelines.

Management Practices

PP1 Policy and Programme Management

PP2 Embedding

Technical Practices

PP3 Analysis

PP4 Design

PP5 Implementation

PP6 Validation

That I have discussed in my previous blog:

An overview of BCM Life cycle based on BCI GPG

This blog will discuss principles, concepts, assumptions, processes, methods and techniques, outcome and reviews that are involved in the design stage of the BCM lifecycle.

Since the design stage is the professional practice within the business continuity management lifecycle that identify, select appropriate solutions to determine how continuity can be achieved in the event of an incident. This stage determines the solutions to the business continuity requirements.

General Principles

• The business continuity requirement from the analysis stage and the outcome of risk and threat assessment are reviewed.

• The appropriate solutions are designed.

• The top management should approve the most appropriate solution and the project should be initialized for implementation.

Concept and Assumption:

Organisation with existing business continuity programme having designed solutions and implemented is no longer relevant due to changing threats.

Process

The solution design process should include the following steps

1. Identify and document existing continuity capability plan

2. Identify suitable solutions: new solutions or review existing solutions

3. Adjust solution to accommodate the phase level of recovery

4. Analyze the solution based on cost and efficiency

5. Present top management with an evaluation of a range of solutions and get approval on selected ones.

6. Consolidate the selected solution by resource type.

7. Provide top management with consolidated requirement and the budgetary requirement for purchase

8. Obtain agreement from top management for implementing agreed and approved appropriate solutions

9. Establish the project requirement to implement the agreed solution

Methods and Techniques

There are many well-designed business continuity solutions that can be used within an organisation. Some of them are as follows:

• Diversification

• Replication

• Standby

• Post-incident acquisition

• Do nothing

To achieve these methods and techniques, there may require resources like building and work environment, people, information and communication technology, system, data, equipment, consumables, and suppliers.

Outcome and Review

• The main outcome and review of designing business continuity solutions are a set of business continuity solutions approved by top management.

• Business continuity capabilities based on agreed solutions

• Sufficient and clarified information to establish a project to implement the solutions

• A consolidated set of resources required to be used.

The agreed solutions should be regularly reviewed at pre-agreed intervals or post intervals to identify significant changes.

This stage is also supported by Risk and Threat mitigation measures to identify the appropriate solution. However, this topic will not be covered in this blog.

For further understanding of other stages of BCI: GPG. Click on the link below:

https://www.thebci.org/training-qualifications/good-practice-guidelines.html

Reference:

The Business Continuity Institute. (2018). BCI: Good Practice Guidelines. Berkshire: The Business Continuity Institute.