One of the ways to help ensure continuity of a business component in the event that incidents with disruptive impacts occur is to prepare plans for it. These plans generally provide detailed instructions and list the people responsible for carrying them out so that the organization can operate in contingency mode or fully recover the business component. If an incident occurs, continuity managers can then immediately activate these plans so that recovery efforts can begin right away. To ensure that plans can be activated at any time, they must constantly be kept updated by those responsible for them. This includes testing the plan by executing all of the procedures it includes to ensure that in the event of a real incident the plan will work precisely as specified.
There are three default types of plans provided with the system: Business Continuity Plan, Disaster Recovery Plan, and Incident Management Plan. Custom types can be created through the Objects and Attributes section of the Administration module. Plans can be created for one or more assets and business components, regardless of whether or not they were classified as critical in the Impact Analysis section of this module. One or more published plans can be associated with the plan being created, allowing them to be grouped as needed.
Plans have certain general properties, such as the person responsible for each, its objective, and the estimated time it takes to execute it. They can be then associated with one or more published procedures, which are the more granular, detailed instructions that should be carried out and which contain information as to whom should perform the tasks listed. These are also created in the Plans section of this module. The resources to be used in normal operating mode and in contingency mode can also be specified for each plan, along with details to explain how each will be used. Images and other types of files can be attached to each plan and, finally, all types of attributes except for Outline and Relationship attributes can be created for both plans and procedures in the Administration module. Like asset attributes, they must be published before they will be available for use, and the order in which they will be displayed can be defined. For details, see Chapter 17: Administration -> Customizations -> Objects and Attributes.
In addition, published plans can be validated to check for inconsistencies, which will be listed if found.