# Business Continuity Plan > Use when performing business continuity plan — template for developing and validating business continuity plans for critical services. Covers business impact analysis, recovery strategy definition, team roles and communication plans, failover procedures, testing schedules, and plan maintenance to ensure operational resilience during disruptions. - Skill: `cloudthinker-ai/business-continuity-plan` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add cloudthinker-ai/business-continuity-plan` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/cloudthinker-ai/business-continuity-plan/raw - Safety review: pending (external: skill-scanner PASS, skillspector PASS) - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: cloudthinker-ai (https://skillmd.com/u/cloudthinker-ai) - Updated: 2026-09-08 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/cloudthinker-ai/business-continuity-plan --- # Business Continuity Plan Skill Develop BCP for **{{ service_name }}** ({{ criticality }}, max downtime: **{{ max_downtime }}**). ## Workflow ### Phase 1 — Business Impact Analysis ``` BUSINESS IMPACT ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [ ] Service: {{ service_name }} [ ] Criticality: {{ criticality }} [ ] Maximum tolerable downtime: {{ max_downtime }} [ ] Revenue impact per hour of downtime: $___ [ ] Customers affected by outage: ___ [ ] Regulatory impact of downtime: ___ [ ] Reputational impact: [ ] LOW [ ] MEDIUM [ ] HIGH DEPENDENCY MAP ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [ ] Upstream dependencies: - ___: criticality: ___ | SLA: ___ - ___: criticality: ___ | SLA: ___ [ ] Downstream dependents: - ___: impact if unavailable: ___ - ___: impact if unavailable: ___ [ ] Third-party dependencies: - ___: SLA: ___ | alternative: ___ - ___: SLA: ___ | alternative: ___ ``` ### Phase 2 — Recovery Objectives ``` RECOVERY TARGETS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Recovery Time Objective (RTO): ___ Recovery Point Objective (RPO): ___ Minimum Business Continuity Objective (MBCO): ___ RECOVERY TIERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Tier | Recovery Time | Functions Restored 1 | 0 - 1 hour | ___ 2 | 1 - 4 hours | ___ 3 | 4 - 24 hours | ___ 4 | 24 - 72 hours| ___ ``` ### Phase 3 — Recovery Strategies ``` STRATEGY PER SCENARIO ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Scenario | Strategy | RTO | Cost Single server failure | Auto-scaling/failover | ___ | ___ AZ failure | Multi-AZ deployment | ___ | ___ Region failure | Multi-region failover | ___ | ___ Cloud provider outage | Multi-cloud / manual | ___ | ___ Cyber attack | Isolation + restore | ___ | ___ Data corruption | Point-in-time restore | ___ | ___ Key personnel unavailable | Cross-training | ___ | ___ Third-party outage | Alternative provider | ___ | ___ ``` ### Phase 4 — Team and Communication ``` INCIDENT TEAM ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Role | Primary | Backup | Contact Incident Commander | ___ | ___ | ___ Technical Lead | ___ | ___ | ___ Communications Lead | ___ | ___ | ___ Business Stakeholder | ___ | ___ | ___ Vendor Liaison | ___ | ___ | ___ COMMUNICATION PLAN ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Audience | Channel | Frequency | Owner Internal team | Slack/Teams | Real-time | ___ Leadership | Email/call | Every ___ hr | ___ Customers | Status page | Every ___ hr | ___ Regulators | Email | As required | ___ Media | PR statement | As needed | ___ ``` ### Phase 5 — Testing and Maintenance ``` BCP TESTING ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [ ] Test schedule: - Tabletop exercise: ___ (quarterly) - Functional test: ___ (semi-annual) - Full simulation: ___ (annual) [ ] Last test date: ___ [ ] Last test result: [ ] PASS [ ] PARTIAL [ ] FAIL [ ] Issues from last test: - ___ - ___ [ ] Plan last updated: ___ [ ] Next review date: ___ [ ] Plan version: ___ [ ] Distribution list updated: [ ] YES ``` ## Counter-Rationalizations | Shortcut | Counter | Why | |----------|---------|-----| | "We can skip some steps for this case" | Adapt the workflow steps, don't skip them | Skipped steps are where incidents and oversights originate | | "The user seems to already know what to do" | Complete all workflow phases with the user | The workflow catches blind spots that experience alone misses | | "This is a minor case, full process is overkill" | Scale the process down, don't turn it off | Minor cases become major when unstructured; the process scales, not disappears | | "I'll fill in the details later" | Complete each section before moving on | Deferred details are forgotten; real-time capture is more accurate | | "The template output isn't necessary" | Always produce the structured output format | Structured output enables comparison, audit trails, and handoff to other teams | ## Output Format Produce a business continuity plan with: 1. **Business impact analysis** (criticality, dependencies, financial impact) 2. **Recovery objectives** (RTO, RPO, recovery tiers) 3. **Recovery strategies** (per scenario with costs) 4. **Team and communication** (roles, contacts, communication channels) 5. **Testing schedule** (exercises planned, last test results, improvements)