Why do we need to do a Business Impact Analysis? Is there an alternative?
Why do we need to do a business impact analysis or BIA? Isn’t there another way to identify the critical functions in our organization?
“Besides, when we go out to ask managers questions about disruptions to their areas of responsibilities they are often quick to defend their turf by saying that such an interruption could never happen here.”
“It just seems like a lot of work and time to conduct something that nobody is going to read, or believe and act on anyway!”
Does this sound familiar, or maybe you are about to embark on your first BIA and have heard something along these lines from others.
The primary purpose of a business impact analysis is not to identify the “critical functions.” Using this reasoning to acquire support for a business impact analysis project will likely foil your success. If senior management cannot sit down in a room and identify the Top 5 or 10 “critical functions” in your organization, then you have the wrong people in these positions. More importantly, do we really only care about the so-called “critical functions?” Does your organization really classify every function and resource into only two-stacks and label them as either “critical” or “not-critical?”
See Why do we need to do a Business Impact Analysis? Is there an alternative? by Barney Pelant
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See Enterprise Risk Assessment & Business Impact Analysis, for a comprehensive treatment of the BIA process.
Tags: BIA, Business Impact Analysis, business impact assessment
