Business Continuity Plan

Change Management

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 One of the most crucial factors of business continuity is the business continuity plan change management. It
addresses two of the most challenging aspects of the plan maintenance: monitoring changes within the organization
and prevent changes to the plan. The main intention of business continuity plan change management is to minimize
of prevent disruption of functions within the organization, minimize the likelihood of returning to pre-change activities
as well as identifying cost-effective ways to use resources and achieve change.

The three steps of business continuity plan change management are shown below: compiled

Review the
Monitor internal Process BC
identified changes
and external plan change
(test results and
changes requests
audit results)

Step one: The first step of the change management process includes the constant monitoring of changes within
the organization. As presented below, changes to the organization might occur at different levels in the respective
categories of processes, resources, and people.

Changes that might impact the organizational processes, resources, or people, can potentially lead to changes in
the business plan. For example, a process-related change might affect recovery priorities; a people-related change
might impact the team structure of the business continuity team or the notification procedure. In addition, resource-
related changes might impact or change the recovery requirements for the organization’s operational systems.

Changes in Resources BC Plan Changes Changes in Processes

Changes in People

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Besides internal changes, business continuity plan is sensitive to external changes such as in business partners,
vendors, facilities, etc. The following examples are potential internal or external changes related to people, processes,
or resources which might affect the business plan.

Example of process changes within the organization:

In any case, when a product is introduced within the organization, new procedures should be added to affect
the business units.

In any case where suppliers switch from automatic order processing to manually processing the order.

Example of people-related changes within the organization:

As a result of an early retirement package, a considerable number of senior personnel has left the organization.

Some of the employees in a specific department have been promoted to different departments and no longer
perform the same role.

Example of resource-related changes within the organization:

Changes in the mainframe system from the hot site vendors result in certain configuration changes affecting
the organization.

During the first step, the organization compiles monitored changes that might potentially impact the business
continuity arrangements.

The main purpose of the second step (review compiled changes, test results, and audit results) of the business
continuity plan change management process is to review the information that might impact the business continuity
arrangement’s validity and accuracy and issue BCMS change requests. In order to come to a conclusion and issue a
BCMS change request, the organization should first gather the compiled changes from step one. The second step is
to analyze the results from business continuity arrangements testing, and the third step is to analyze the results from
the business continuity plan audits. Furthermore, the change manager should coordinate the processing of change
requests and determine if the changes within the organization affect the business plan.

During the third step of the business continuity plan change management (process business continuity plan change
requests), the organization should ensure that changes, revisions, or updates to the business continuity plan are in
accordance to the change control procedures as specified in the business plan. In addition, the third step is the final
step in which the organization proceeds with the BCMS change request.

About the author

Albana Iseni is a Course Development Manager at PECB. She is in charge of designing and developing training
courses and other supportive materials. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact her at: albana.
training@pecb.com.

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