Question

Also, in regards to the coordinator, what skills would they need to have, in order to achieve a culture of Continuous Improvement? How could they, alone, effectively improve the productivity of the DR and BIA teams?

Answer 1

Part-1

Continuous improvement means an ongoing effort to improve products, services or processes. Such efforts can seek incremental improvement over time or breakthrough improvement all at once.

In order to attain a culture of Continuous Improvement in an organization or in ta team, a coordinator or a manager or for that matter people in leading roles in an organization must be able to foresee obstacles which may arise in the organization and have a sound problem-solving demeanor to tackle them in a strategic way which leads to the improvement and growth of the team, which in turn culminates into the improvement of the organization. Thus, the ultimate aim of such coordinators is to make the organizational processes and the organization as efficient as possible.

Listed below are some important skills that a coordinator must possess to achieve a culture of Continuous Improvement (CI)  in an organization:-

• Technical / Domain Specific Skills
  Coordinators or managers must possess a clear and firm understanding of the various techniques to improve existing processes in an organization. Apart from that, they should have a solid understanding of the domains or processes existing in their organization so that they could apply the process improvement techniques to achieve the culture of Continuous Improvement.
• Organizational Skills
  Coordinators must be able to spearhead both the detailed planning and implementation of various projects. The coordinators should be organized and committed enough to meet deadlines along with their teams, thus achieving Continuous Improvement for processes.
• Leadership Skills
  Coordinators should assume the role of a team player and act as game-changers for a company, inspiring their team members to give their best efforts. Goal setting, direction setting and taking initiatives are some major skills in this regard.
• Sound Analytical Thinking
  Coordinators responsible for the culture of Continuous Improvement of an organization, critically evaluate individual processes and projects which are ongoing in an organization and then synthesize their inputs and analysis to arrive at a summary of the overall organizational status.
• Communication Skills
  Coordinators or managers should be well versed in public speaking, listening and documenting ideas as they are entrusted by the organization to conduct training, hold presentations, facilitate meetings and create reports of the state of the organization.

Along with these above-mentioned skills, the coordinators to achieve Continuous Improvement for an organization, use various tools which aid them in their work. Some of the tools are:-

• Kaizen tools. (such as value stream maps, fishbone diagrams, or kaizen newspapers)
• Business process management software.
• Lean Six-Sigma Model.
• Microsoft Office Suite. (including Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint)

Putting the skills and tools to good effect, coordinators are entrusted with the following responsibilities to achieve a culture of Continuous Improvement in an organization:-

• Analyze Business Processes.
• Develop Strategies.
• Lead Team Activities.
• Monitor Progress.
• Provide Mentorship and feedback.
• Build Trust among team members.

Part-2

DR stands for Disaster Recovery, BCP stands for Business Continuity Plan and BIA stands for Business Impact Analysis.
Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity Plan and Business Impact Analysis are closely related but are significantly different concepts that all fit into risk and disaster management.

Business Continuity Plan focuses on overall business operations in an organization. It emphasizes on keeping the business operating even in case of some disasters. BCP involves prioritizing various business processes by their importance to the organization.  

Business Impact Analysis is a subpart of BCP. BIA is a foresight formal methodology to determine how a disruption to the Information Technology (IT) system of an organization will impact its process, requirements, and interdependencies concerning the business mission of the organization. BIA helps to determine and prioritize the critical IT systems for an organization. It helps to identify the IT system components like storage devices and switches which render critical services to the organization. BIA also helps to identify the possible damage that could happen to system components in the case of a disaster. The main components of BIA are as follows:-

• Identification of critical organizational assets.
• Conduction of Risk Assessment.
• Determination of Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD) for an IT asset.
• Calculating failure and recovery metrics.

Thus, BIA supports BCP by analyzing and deciding which processes are the most critical ones to recover in case of a disaster.

Coordinators can improve the productivity of the BIA teams in the following ways:-

• Guiding the team in conducting a risk assessment for an organization by considering both geographical and infrastructural opportunities and threats.
• Providing team members with training and updated resources about various factors of risk management.
• Conducting periodic meetings with top management to know their business directives and focuses.
• Conducting audits of the existing IT systems and determining the Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD) for various IT assets.
• Working closely with the stakeholders of the organization to support Business Performance Management Metrics.
• Supporting business by making fact-based decisions with appropriate advanced analytics to improve various performance metrics of the teams.

Disaster Recovery, on the other hand, is more concerned about the events that happen after a disaster has struck. It is the process of getting backups of storage modules, data devices, and other critical computer systems so that those could be recovered and restored in case of any critical disaster or system failure. The main aim of disaster recovery is to get every system back to its normal state as they were before the disaster.

Disaster Recovery tends to deal with computer systems and data, whereas the Business Continuity Plan is concerned with the overall business operations of an organization.

Coordinators can improve the productivity of the DR teams in the following ways:-

• Providing team members with training and updated resources about various factors of disaster recovery. Detailed process outlines are provided by the coordinators to the team members to follow in case of a disaster.
• Conducting meetings with higher authorities to detail them about the assets for disaster management.
• Meeting with local disaster management personnel to help out during disasters.
• Doing network security audits.
• Doing fire safety audits.
• Helping systems to be restored after any disaster.