Business Continuity Planners face a constant dilemma. While creating Plans to assure their organization’s ability to survive disruption, they’re caught between what they know and what they don’t:
- They don’t know what will happen
- They don’t know when it will happen
- They don’t know how severe it will be
- They don’t know how long it will last
Facing those unknowns, it is easier to plan for what you do know. You live in an earthquake zone, so you plan for that. Your region is susceptible to hurricanes, so you plan for that.
Another easy path is to look at the big picture and plan for major impacts. What must we do if our facility is unavailable, if our people are unavailable, or if our data center goes off-line?
These are all common ways organizations, and Planners, choose to plan; and they are all subject to Murphy’s Law (“Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.”). Just look to recent news events:
- For years scientists and scholars have focused attention on a potential Avian Flu pandemic – only to have Swine Flu (H1N1) flare up first½
- Everyone expects their FedEx package to arrive on time. Who expects one of their plans to crash (as one did in early 2010)?
- Who anticipated that a volcano in Iceland would shut down air traffic in most of northern Europe?
- Which US auto manufacturers planned for a tsunami in Japan that would make it impossible for them to produce red cars?
- Can you rely on the RTO of a critical IT application whose recovery has never been tested (ask the State of Virginia, or Abercrombie & Fitch!)?
The flaw in every ‘scenario’ plan is that is relies on assumptions: something taken for granted or accepted as true without proof. The act of supposing, imagining, or considering as true or existing, what is known not to be true, or what is not proved.
Assumptions are made every day. And like weather predictions, they’re generally wrong:
- International forces have massed their naval power in the Persian Gulf for years. Did anyone anticipated Somali pirates as a bigger threat?
- When economic prognosticators saw the world begin to slide into recession, did any of them warn us to sell our Lehman Brothers stock?
- How long before November of 2008 did anyone assume the US would have a President of color?
- How many people knew there was an active volcano in Iceland – let alone assumed it could ground planes in every northern European airport?
- Who expected the U.S. East coast to experience an earthquake and a hurricane – both in the same week?
You may assume the earthquake will occur during the business day, or assume the amount and type of damage it will cause. Or assume that cell phone communication will still be available, roads will be passable, people will come to work (even if their homes are damaged), airplanes will fly, or hot site space will be available½ The list is endless.
What if the earthquake strikes during the morning commute? Or causes destruction of the parking lot, but not the building? Or if neither land lines, nor cellular phones norVOIP networks are operable? If your people can’t get to the office – or won’t? If the only way to get to your alternate site is a 3-day car trip? That the only available hot site space is two thousand miles away – or in another country? Not a problem (some may say), our plan is based on a ‘worst case’ scenario!
Then what if the earthquake strikes during fiscal year end? Or only the buildingrestrooms are rendered inoperable? Or only the cellular network is available – for weeks? Or the nearby bridge can’t be rebuilt for a year? Is your ‘worst case scenario’ capable of dealing with those?
The full text of Murphy’s Law actually states: “Whatever can go wrong will – at the worst possible time and in the worst possible way.” When the validity of a plan is based on assumptions – as every scenario plan is – failure is the likely outcome.
By creating a scenario plan based on assumptions, you increase your odds of becoming a victim of Murphy’s Law.
And there’s a corollary to Murphy’s Law – called O’Toole’s Commentary – which states: Murphy was an optimist.
(So what’s the alternative? My next Blog will look at Asset-based Planning as an alternative to assumption-based ‘scenario’ planning. )
