Seeing what hangs by a thread
Identifying the vulnerabilities of your organisation
A day to map your breaking points: what depends on a single person, client or tool, ranked by likelihood and cost of stoppage.
Objectives
- Identify the single points of failure in your organisation: the tasks, decisions and access rights that depend on one person
- Distinguish a tolerable vulnerability from one that brings the activity to a halt
- Rank your vulnerabilities by likelihood and cost of stoppage
- Build your own robustness map and keep it up to date
Programme
- Morning: What depends on you alone: What robustness is, and why it runs counter to performance · Identifying single points of failure: knowledge, access, relationships, decisions · The absence test: what happens if this person is away for three weeks?
- Afternoon: Prioritising rather than tackling everything: Likelihood, cost of stoppage, time to restart: the three-way grid · The vulnerabilities it is rational to keep · Building your map, and choosing the first two projects to start
Prerequisites
None. Running or managing an activity is sufficient.
What you take away
Your vulnerability map, ranked, with two dated projects.