There’s no one specific formula for creating a business continuity plan, but there are some general principles that apply to them all. Analyze - as mentioned above, it’s important to analyze how a disruption would affect every business function, from sales to service calls to online helpdesks to HR to accounting and beyond. The analysis could include a ranking of how critical to operations each department or area is. It can also include estimates of revenue losses by function, or other key metrics. Plan - once the research into business impact is done and the crisis team has a good understanding of which operations are most critical to address, planning comes next. Here, the team would devise a specific plan on how to proceed during a disruption—what each department would do or the steps employees would take, both immediately when the disruption occurs and later once it’s over. Practice and prepare - just as businesses hold fire drills to train employees how to stay safe during an emergency, you should practice and test your business continuity plan. Testing the plan helps the crisis team identify and eliminate weaknesses in the plan, such as bottlenecks where processes don’t work as expected. Testing also helps train employees and prepare them to act in a real-life disruption scenario. If a business continuity plan is going to be successful, everyone has to be on board in support of the plan—not just the team that devised it.