Business Continuity Metrics

That Business Continuity Metrics Challenge Again

As the old saying goes, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. For business continuity to get the senior management attention it deserves, hard data on your BC program progress could be a good idea. But of course, there is still the question of what to measure. And then the question of what the measurements really mean. Is your BC score good, bad or indifferent – compared to what your organisation needs? Compared to other companies? Compared to what? The first step is often to crack open a business continuity standard to get an initial reading (even if it’s “yes or no”) about whether you are doing things properly. But avid BC metricians will go further. Read more

How Do You Measure Business Continuity (Other than by Failure)?

Measuring the effectiveness of business continuity planning and management poses a conceptual problem. If business continuity is all about keeping operations going in adverse circumstances, how do you measure your ‘goodness of keeping operations going’? IT disaster recovery is by comparison an easier case to deal with, thanks to its recovery time and maximum data loss objectives (RTO and RPO). But business continuity is more about ‘always on’. Anything else less than 100% implies failure. What kind of a handle can we get on other business continuity metrics and what use are they? Read more