BKAGTBCP.RVW   20020922

"A Guide to Business Continuity Planning", James C. Barnes, 2001,
0-471-53015-8, U$35.00
%A   James C. Barnes
%C   5353 Dundas Street West, 4th Floor, Etobicoke, ON   M9B 6H8
%D   2001
%G   0-471-53015-8
%I   John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
%O   U$35.00 416-236-4433 fax: 416-236-4448
%P   174 p.
%T   "A Guide to Business Continuity Planning"

Chapter one is an introduction, and also illustrates one of the
predominant characteristics of the book: enormous tables with little
apparent purpose.  Table 1.1 is a list, by country, of regulatory
agencies that may have something to require from you in the way of
business continuity planning (BCP).  The table is stated to be for
motivational use, but does point out some BCP ideas or policies. 
There is also a rather innocent sounding mention that the book is
written from the perspective of a consultant: this fact is more
significant than the reader may realize.  For project foundation,
chapter two does not give the usual advice to get management onside
and build a broadly based team, but concentrates on costing,
expanding, and selling consulting services.  (There are confusing
areas: having presented one questionnaire, the text tells you to use
results from "the two."  Some items (such as the advice to use a
month's worth of invoices to estimate rate of consumption of supplies)
are helpful, but a lot of space seems to be wasted (on things like
pages of fake employee and customer data--and a month's worth of
supply invoices).  The list of threats, consequences, and preventive
measures is more than usually detailed (and listed twice), in chapter
three, but the discussion of business impact analysis (BIA) itself is
*extremely* terse.  Chapter four's initial material on strategy
selection is quite confused.  The example RFP (Request For Proposal)
for business continuity services does have some good points, but the
pages of lists of specific PCs to be provided seem pointless.  Later
details are brief, but reasonable.  Plan development, in chapter five,
assumes multiple teams and, again, has some good points (the provision
for leadership succession), but the lists become too specific in many
places (does the top level emergency management team really all need
to do CPR?)  There is almost no general discussion of testing and
maintenance in chapter six.

The book does not necessarily provide erroneous or misleading
information, but only has enough real material for a good magazine
article.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 2002   BKAGTBCP.RVW   20020922