How to plan business continuity for operations
Useful business continuity planning starts from single points of failure rather than from scenarios. You cannot predict which disruption will occur, but you can list the people, systems and suppliers whose absence would stop the operation, and that list is short enough to act on.
Why scenario based planning produces nothing
Planning by scenario generates documents for events that never occur in the form imagined. The effort goes into describing the disruption rather than into removing the dependency.
Meanwhile the real exposure is usually one person, one supplier or one system that nobody has considered.
Dependencies worth listing:
- Processes only one person can perform
- Suppliers with no alternative
- Systems with no manual fallback
- Access held by a single individual
- Knowledge that exists nowhere in writing
Dependency and mitigation
| Dependency | Mitigation | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| One person knows a process | Runbook plus a trained backup | Low |
| Single supplier | An approved alternative | Medium |
| System with no fallback | A manual procedure | Low |
| Access held by one person | A second holder | Very low |
| Undocumented knowledge | Write it down | Low |
Step by step to reduce exposure
- List processes only one person can perform, which is the fastest exercise.
- Write runbooks for each, tested by someone else.
- Identify single source suppliers, and qualify an alternative.
- Check access, ensuring nothing critical is held by one individual.
- Define manual fallbacks for the systems that matter.
- Test one fallback, since untested plans usually fail.
- Review annually, or after any change of personnel.
Why the access check is the cheapest win available
Every company has at least one account, key or credential held by exactly one person. Identifying them takes an afternoon and fixing them takes minutes, and it removes a category of disruption entirely. It is almost always the highest return item on the list.
Why choose Jestor
In Jestor, runbooks can be documents attached to their processes, access is granted per role rather than per individual with a visible user list, processes are built without code so a backup person can be trained on the system rather than on a specialist tool, and the history shows who performed what.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should continuity planning start from scenarios?
No. Start from single points of failure, which are knowable. See jestor.com.
What is the cheapest improvement?
Checking for access held by exactly one person.
Why test a fallback?
Because untested fallbacks usually fail at the moment they are needed.
Video Tutorial: Step by Step
With Jestor, you can automate workflows, connect teams, and build internal systems your way, all without code and powered by AI. Discover Jestor at jestor.com and see how to take your company's operations to a new level of efficiency and control.