Determining BCP Scope

The success and effectiveness of a Business Continuity Plan depends greatly upon whether its scope is properly defined. Business processes and technology can muddy the waters and make this task difficult. For instance, distributed systems and genuine dependence on at least some desktop systems for vital business functions expands the scope beyond core functions. Geographically dispersed companies - often the result of mergers - complicate matters as well.

Also, large companies are understandably more complex. The boundaries between where a function begins and ends are oftentimes fuzzy and sometimes poorly defined.

Political pressures can influence the scope as well. A department that thinks that it’s vital but which is outside the BCP scope may lobby to be included therein, appropriately or otherwise. Everybody wants to be important, and some just want to appear to be important.

Scope creep can become scope leap if the BCP project team is weak or inexperienced. For the success of the project, strong leaders must make rational decisions about the scope of the project. Remember that the scope of BCP projects can be changed in later iterations of the project.

The project team needs to find a balance between too narrow a scope, which will make the plan ineffective, and too wide a scope, which will make the plan too cumbersome.