How to gather data for a business impact analysis
To develop a complete and throrough business impact anylysis (BIA), you’ll need to dig
deep to gather a lot of information about the many aspects of your business. The best way
to do this is by drawing on a variety of resources in a variety of ways. Here are three ways to
collect data: using questionnaires, one-on-one interviews and group sessions, with tips on
how to each effectively.
Data gathering methods
Questionnaires
The most common method for gathering data is the
questionnaire. Questionnaires are useful for soliciting
information from many people, especially when it
may be difficult to gather everyone for real-time
interviews.
Questionnaires are also easy to administer to
a lot of people simultaneously. Like all surveys,
BIA questionnaires must be carefully designed to ask the right questions and be easily
understood, not open to wide variances in interpretation. While questionnaires are useful,
they shouldn’t be your sole data-gathering tool. After gathering information from questionnaires you’ll also want to arrange time to meet face-to-face with your organization’s staff to
clarify answers and turn subjective answers into more objective analysis. Questionnaires also
take time to fill out, and people may not be motivated to take time from their busy day to
complete them.
One-on-one interviews
These allow you to more actively engage your staff,
to probe, and to structure questioning on the fly to
get the required information. However, depending
on the size of your organization, this method may
be overly time-consuming.
Group sessions
Group sessions are an excellent way to actively
engage your team and reach consensus on the
information you’re gathering. Through lively discussion and pooling of knowledge and experience, your
team will produce better data for your organization’s
BIA. By actively participating in the process, they’ll
take more ownership of and pride in their BIA.
Here are some tips to get the most from your group sessions:
• Involve as many people as possible. Get everyone from each department to
participate, including every function. Encourage all to contribute their opinions. This
will give each person a sense of ownership and commitment and allow you to tease
out more complete information.
• Include both business people and IT people. These two groups rarely communicate
enough. By working together, IT staff will get a clearer picture of the expectations of
their business counterparts, while business folks will better understand the capabilities
and limitations of their current IT infrastructure and adjust their expectations accordingly.
• Keep it short and make it fun. Most group BIA sessions can be accomplished within
an hour-and-a-half. This minimizes the impact to your staff’s work day. A good facilitator
will keep it interesting and fun and will keep the group’s focus on what’s most important
without getting mired in minutiae.
• Be consistent. Conduct your sessions with different departments in the exact same
way every single time. This will make the experience common across the organization
and give everyone the same frame of reference for future discussion.
• Identify processes, not procedures. The BIA is concerned with what your team does
(processes), not how they do them (procedures). Keep the discussion focused on
processes. When the BIA is completed and you’re developing recovery strategies, you’ll
then identify alternative procedures for accomplishing processes, such as using failover
data centers or switching to manual procedures until your technology is back up.
By using a variety of methods to gather your data you’re most likely to get what you
really need, and your business continuity plan will be stronger because of it.
Want to know more? Visit www.MIR3.com/bcguide for a free copy of
The Definitive Guide to Business Continuity Planning.
© 2012 MIR3, Inc. All rights reserved. MIR3 is a service mark of MIR3, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 01102012
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