Previously, this series focused on Planning & Plan Development- the first 2 of the 4Ps of the Incident Management Framework-. This blog explores the 3rd P: Preparedness.
Planning enables Plan development. Plans should help carry out those strategies in response to outages. But Plans should not be the end-state of a BCM program.
The next step in the Incident Management Framework is Preparedness – to assure ability and readiness to respond:
- Awareness: Let stakeholders (executives, managers, employees, regulators and customers) know what you’ve planned, and how a disruption – and recovery – will impact them.
- Exercise and Test: Do it frequently enough to build ‘muscle memory’. And exercise using a variety of scenarios.
- Continuous improvements: Track exercise results to uncover gaps in Planning assumptions, and progress toward recovery improvement goals – reducing response times, RTO’s and limiting impacts.
- Build Confidence: Develop senior executives’ willingness to invoke those Plans in response to any disruption (rather than depend upon an ad hoc response).
The Preparedness P should be a concerted effort to create confidence in your BCM Program – and the resources expended on planning and plans.
In the next, and final, installment of this series we’ll examine the 4th P: Program Management.
