Business Continuity planning?!

[Mustang]

Does anyone do BCP these days?

The amount of chaos caused by the snow seems to be primarily down to companies and individuals not being prepared, not having a strategy for dealing with snow. For individuals, this is mixed up with an element of laziness but for an organisation, is it tied in with incompetence? Surely if people had sat down in calm times they would have a strategy for dealing with keeping their businesses running during moments like this?

I know clients that planned for Swine Flu but not snow! What have/are some of your clients like? Do they do business continuity planning? Do you - have you got informal "strategies" in place (perhaps even discussed with the other half) for certain events should they occur (no matter how trivial)?

What do the crowd say?!

[nomadd]

Does anyone do BCP these days?


What do the crowd say?!

No, not for contractors.

I have a manager nagging me currently about a piece of work. I've just reminded him that it could have all been done yesterday, if I'd been allowed to work from home. I also reminded him of his company policy of "no contractors are allowed to work from home; they must take the day off, unpaid."

You just can't win in this game.

[TFour]

From an IT perspective, clientco plays at it but is pretty ineffective - the are some BC plans but the criticality of systems change as upgrades occur, business use expands and other systems are retireed and no-one knows to reflect that in the BCP plan.

[BolshieBastard]

Ha! I knew a guy, very nice chap who was going on about BCP. No one understood a ******* word he was on about. Now if he'd have called it Disaster Recovery Plan...............

[ratewhore]

Ha! I knew a guy, very nice chap who was going on about BCP. No one understood a ******* word he was on about. Now if he'd have called it Disaster Recovery Plan...............

...he would have been talking about a subset of a BCP.

[thunderlizard]

But at least he'd be using actual words, rather than a TLA.

My BCP consists of an offsite backup every day that runs over the internet for about an hour at 19:00 (thus crippling BBC iplayer) and a laptop that I could restore it to....probably

[ratewhore]

But at least he'd be using actual words, rather than a TLA.

My BCP consists of an offsite backup every day that runs over the internet for about an hour at 19:00 (thus crippling BBC iplayer) and a laptop that I could restore it to....probably

That's not a business continuity plan, it's a DR plan...

[original PM]

we are poitively encouraged to work from home where possible - reduces carbon footprint etc.

problem is that allthough a lot of people have the ability to work from home it seems someone skimped on the actual infrastructure to support it

no as each individual department has to pay the centralised IT department for this priviledge where did all the extra money go...


and why was the IT director able to buy a Ferarri with his bonus....


oh hang on....


clueless jollock bugglers

[BolshieBastard]

...he would have been talking about a subset of a BCP.

Yeah Im sure they would have understood what a 'subset of a BCP' was as well,

Nevertheless, people would have had an idea what he was talking about if he'd gone on about DRP. BCP just confused the **** out of them so he could have been speaking Russian for all his complete BCP meant to them!

[paddytheirishman]

Executed part of my BCP Friday and today.
On Friday, I decided to scan and convert to pdf the next report that is due my way, to help facilitate review and in case the muppets working on it loose any part of the original hardcopy.

As heavy snow is predicted tonight, I went into the clients office today and printed the pdf copies of the report to bring home and review from my home office in case I get stuck at home tomorrow.

Of course, because I went to this trouble, its thawing at the moment

On a more serious note, BCP was a big thing after 911, I remember being involved in the compilation of the strategy for the company I worked in at the time. But, like all things, people forget after a while the importance of such things till the sh*t hits the fan. I see it in project plans being generated for projects I'm working on, no risk analysis or contingency built in, just wait till the problems occur, which they always do.