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Business, academic & research continuity

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Ready to get started with making a plan or updating an existing plan? The department work typically looks something like this.

Identify a business continuity lead(s) for your department. The lead will work with BARC to create the plan.
Badge: Choose your character
Submit a request to BARC for assistance. Then, schedule a kick off meeting with departmental leadership, continuity lead(s) and BARC to review the overall process and expectations.
Badge: Begin your quest
Complete the required orientation and training on how to use Husky Ready, the online platform you’ll use to create your plan.

 

Note: At this time, BARC is not adding additional users to Husky Ready because the platform will be updated to a newer version. To request access when the new version is available, complete the BARC request form.

Badge: Study the tutorial
Write the continuity plan in Husky Ready, working with BARC to complete the plan one section at a time. The degree of BARC facilitation will vary for each department. Some will prefer more in depth and ongoing support, and some will prefer to work more independently once they feel comfortable using Husky Ready. Expect 5-6 meetings with some offline work in between. The size and complexity of your department will determine how long it actually takes, but expect about 10 hours of total work, plus additional time as needed to develop recovery strategies.
Badge: Go on an adventure
Receive plan approval from BARC and the designated department head.
Badge: Level up
Once a plan is completed, it is important to share it with others in your department to ensure that everybody is aware of it and how they can use the plan when needed. BARC can facilitate a scenario-based tabletop exercise to test the plan and verify it effectively captures what is needed to be useful for continuing your department’s operations during an incident.
Badge: Share and practice
Update your plan on a regular basis. Once the initial plan is written, continuity planning is a continuous cycle of review, testing and revision, as staff, operations, facilities and technical requirements change.
Badge: Prepare for the next round

What’s in a plan?

Each department’s plan will include key business processes, resources and recovery strategies.

What's in a plan

A key business process is work normally performed by a department and that must continue or resume within a specified timeframe.

This is probably the most important section of the entire plan. The department will identify the most important work it does, how long that work can be interrupted before there are serious negative consequences and what the impacts to the University would be if the department could not complete the work.

In general, continuity plans should keep the number of key business processes between 5-7, so it’s important to carefully consider what should be captured. Each process can have associated work streams if needed. For example, a department may identify Human Resources as a business process and list associated activities that include hiring, performance assessments scheduling and payroll.

It is necessary to understand all the things you need to have to successfully complete your department’s critical work.

  • Staffing: general information about overall staffing for normal operations and during a crisis. Specialized teams that serve a support role will also be identified.
  • Buildings: identification and details about spaces your department needs to use, including those such as labs that cannot be easily substituted for and what alternatives you may have.
  • Equipment & supplies: the things your department needs to have and how to find replacements or additional inventory.
  • Vital records & artifacts: the documents, media and culturally significant items that have physical presence and value.
  • Third parties: vendors and other external providers the department relies on with determinations of how long operations can continue without those vendors or how to find alternatives.
  • Technology: all the systems and applications your department relies on to do your work, including expectations about how quickly your department will need to restore those systems and any lost data.

Recovery strategies are the actions you take when a key business process or resource is impacted by a disruptive incident. Strategies include immediate actions and general guidelines about what to do (not the specifics of how). Developing strategies can require more intensive work in the continuity planning process.