The business continuity plan is the culmination of the planning activity, which includes business impact analysis, risk assessment, strategy definition and selection and implementation of appropriate resilience and continuity/recovery solutions.

It is the document that will be used at the time of a major disruptive incident to aid the various teams in ensuring effective emergency response, incident management and the continuity/recovery of your critical activities. It will, therefore, typically include the following elements :

• Initial response, including escalation and invocation, callout, damage and impact assessment;
• Crisis/incident management, including team structure/membership, roles and responsibilities, priorities and checklists of key activities;
• Business recovery, including team structure/membership, priorities, recovery objectives and checklists of key activities for infrastructure and business recovery.