During my recent blogging sojourn I was engaged in a variety of article writing and speaking activities. One of these was the delivery of an “interactive” session plus a half-day workshop as part of a “BCM in the Public Sector” conference in Melbourne.The topic and content of my workshop had been developed well ahead of the conference but the need was very well summed up on the first day in a satirical commentary from Dr Carl Gibson. Carl began his presentation by offering his views on the state of BCM using the analogy of a student’s end of term report.
The title of this post was part of that report card, a commentary on the integration of BCM with other enterprise management disciplines.
My workshop was entitled “Establishing and Delivering a BCM Programme. Thinking beyond the plan.”
According to the Business Continuity Institute’s Good Practice Guide, (2010, p4) the BCM practitioner needs to demonstrate “solid programme and project management skills” and must “understand the language, operating models and processes of the organization in which BCM is to applied.”
Unfortunately the GPG does not offer much more of value on that subject, which is not surprising as it not intended to provide Good Practice for Programme and Project Management, but rather for BCM. Also there is generally not a lot of focus on these management skills at BCM conferences or training. This workshop was intended to address this gap and to introduce some management processes that are used in both public and private sector organisations to deliver change and to build/enhance capability.
When we try to operate in isolation we tend to re-invent these other disciplines to match our own views. We become corporate loners and do not learn to “‘play well with other children”. To overcome the loner tendency we need to work on our enterprise socialisation skills, which can often start by knowing the language of enterprise management – and understanding what the people who do Portfolio, Programme and Projdect Management actually mean when they use their words and concpets.
Running a BCM Programme requires more than just working through the BCM Lifecycle every year.
It is the difference between having 10 years experience, and having 1 year’s experience repeated 10 times.
The workshop, just in case you may wish to commission it for in-house delivery, has three objectives;
- To provide an introduction to the basics of Portfolio and Programme Management, based on Best Practice models currently promoted by various Australian Governments. (which can be readily modified for international audience)
- To apply these ideas to the discipline of Business Continuity Management.
- To map this learning back to your current organisational challenges.
I would be interested in hearing about any reader’s experiences integrating the various enterprise management disciplines with your BCM work.
How have your integrated BCM with your organisations’ Portfolio Management?
How do you approach multi-year Programme design and planning?
How do you get engaged as a stakeholder in your organisations Project Management framework?
Leave a Reply