Over the past few months I have been involved with a number of business continuity planning professionals discussing the best metrics for reporting on a company's state of readiness. This has gotten me to thinking – and when I think, trouble starts. To me this is a challenge, not just to pick the one most important metric, but to create a metric that allows me to share the most information concerning the program. So, time to get creative.
So, what I would do, because I can be a jerk sometimes, is to provide a metric that makes them ask me to explain it. And, what I came up with is…
The Adjusted Recovery Confidence Factor or ARCF.
Imagine if you went in the board room and simply announced, “Concerning our Enterprise Emergency Management Program, we have an Adjusted Recovery Confidence Factor of 54%. Any questions?”
Oh, so you want to know what the ARCF is? Well, let me explain.
The ARCF is our Recovery Confidence Factor multiplied by a Confidence Adjuster and a Documentation Adjuster.
The Recovery Confidence Factor (RCF) is the # of Critical Business Units (CBUs) that have executed Successful Recovery Tests (SRT) in the past 12 months divided by the total # of (CBUs).
A SRT is a test in which the business units have achieved the pre-defined Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) as established in our Business Impact Analysis. CBUs that do not have pre-defined RTOs, by definition, cannot have conducted a SRT.
The Confidence Adjuster (CA) is a value, as a percentage, that depicts our confidence that we have identified the right CBUs. If the CBUs have been established as a result of conducting a thorough and complete BIA, the CA is 100%. Otherwise, it is a subjective number based on the process we went through to define our CBUs.
The Documentation Adjuster (DA) is a value, as a percentage, that depicts the degree in which our recovery program is supported by fully documented recovery procedures that eliminate our dependency on our most expert and experienced resources to execute the recovery solutions.
So, for example, you might report:
We have 20 CBUs.
Although we did not conduct as thorough a BIA as best practices suggest, I am 90% confident that we have identified the right CBUs.
Of the 20 CBUs, although all of them have participated in tests, only 15 of them successfully demonstrated the ability to meet their RTOs. The other 5 have some issues that must be resolved prior to the next test.
The documentation that supports our entire recovery process is, in my estimation, 80% complete. There are some plans that require maintenance and some recovery procedures that are not fully documented.
So, our Recovery Confidence factor is 15 CBUs with SRTs / 20 CBUs or 75%.
And, our Adjusted Recovery Confidence Factor is our RCF of .75 multiplied by our Confidence Adjuster of .90 and our Documentation Adjuster of .80 (.75 X .90 X .80) for a final ARCF of 54%.
So there. By reporting one metric, I was able to share a lot of information about our program.
Will this work in a real world situation? Probably not – but I kind of like the ARCF©. I think I will keep it.