Training module
Business Continuity Strategies & Solutions
Evaluate continuity strategy options, design continuity solutions, and apply decision criteria aligned with ISO 22301 time-based requirements
Are continuity strategies chosen without evaluating options, leading to expensive or insufficient solutions?
This training module guides you through selecting and designing feasible strategies and solutions based on time‑based continuity requirements.
Overview
What this module is about
Many organisations jump from “critical” to “we need DR” and end up with strategies that are either unaffordable, not implementable, or disconnected from real operational constraints. Others document generic options (alternate site, remote work, manual workarounds) but cannot show why they are sufficient for specific time requirements, dependencies, and minimum resources.
This training module focuses on strategy selection and solution design: how to translate time-based requirements into practical continuity approaches across people, facilities, technology, information, and suppliers; how to evaluate options and constraints; and how to document decisions so they remain usable for implementation and assurance. The module does not teach Business Impact Analysis execution, and it does not develop business continuity plans, response procedures, or exercising programmes—those are handled in the dedicated ISO 22301 modules.
Audience
Who it is for
Management system implementers and coordinators
Executives and department heads accountable for management system performance
Those responsible for processes, policies, assets, risks and controls
Auditors seeking insight into management-side practice, not audit technique
Consultants working on management system design, governance or improvement
Decision supportIs this module for you?
It is a good fit if you…
need to turn time-based requirements into viable continuity strategies.
want to compare recovery options using explicit trade-offs and constraints.
design continuity solutions across people, facilities, IT, and suppliers.
need defensible strategy decisions for approval and assurance.
support ISO 22301-aligned implementation or audit-readiness.
It may not be the best fit if you…
are looking for business impact analysis or criticality definition.
want detailed recovery plan or runbook development.
focus on exercising, testing, or crisis response execution.
already operate proven, well-documented continuity strategies.
What to bring
This module assumes participants can work with management-system concepts and can discuss service impacts, dependencies, and time constraints. Participants should be comfortable interpreting time-based continuity requirements (e.g., MTPD/MAO, RTO, RPO) as design inputs—without needing to learn how these are produced.
Helpful background includes:
Familiarity with key services/processes and their enabling dependencies (people, sites, technology, suppliers)
Ability to discuss operational workarounds realistically (constraints, not aspirations)
Agenda
What is taught
7 parts01What strategy and solution means in ISO 22301
How to distinguish continuity strategy selection from downstream planning and response, and translate time requirements into implementable solution requirements
02Strategy options landscape
How to navigate continuity strategy families and recognise typical misfits such as DR-only thinking, paper resilience, and assumption-driven designs
03Designing solutions across enabling dimensions
How to design integrated continuity solutions across people, facilities, technology, information, and suppliers; including minimum operating models and recovery sequencing
04Feasibility and constraint evaluation
How to test proposed strategies against real-world constraints and expose single points of failure, shared dependencies, and unrealistic workarounds
05Decision logic and governance of trade-offs
How to make recovery trade-offs explicit and document decisions so cost, recovery time, complexity, and residual exposure remain transparent
06Traceability and maintainability of strategy decisions
How to link strategy choices to time requirements and assumptions and define change triggers that require strategy review or update
07Technology as an enabler
How to use structured registers and AI-assisted summarisation to keep strategy decisions current and comparable without replacing managerial judgement
Outcomes
Learning outcomes
01
Translate recovery requirements into a set of viable strategy options
02
Evaluate feasibility and constraints to select a coherent portfolio of continuity strategies
03
Document strategy decisions with rationale and trade‑offs for management approval
Distinguish between strategy and solution design versus plan execution and exercising
Recognise failure modes in continuity strategy selection and avoid over‑engineering or under‑investment
Align continuity solutions with organisational capabilities and resource realities
Materials
The content and the assessment
Written module
The full content in writing, complete in itself. Videos are recorded for parts of it as an alternative way through, and the written module always carries everything.
Exercises
Graded work on the case organisation's own registers: structured answers checked against the encoded case, written answers scored against a rubric traced to it, with a trainer holding the final word on every assessed item.
On completion
The assessed exercises must be passed before the certificate is issued.
Scheduling
No public run of Business Continuity Strategies & Solutions is scheduled at the moment. Tell us you are interested and we will let you know when the next one opens, or discuss running it in-house.
Module facts
- Module ID
- HAM-BC-S-02
- Discipline
- Business Continuity
- Part of tracks
- Management System Manager
Case organisation
All modules share one company
Each module enters the company at a particular point in its history and finds it as that history has left it.
Northstar Integrated Services AG is a group headquartered in Zurich, operating in six European countries, with about 1,350 employees at the end of 2025. It provides digital operations platforms and managed operational services to regulated organisations in healthcare, the public sector and industrial services. Founded in 2008 as a field-operations firm serving business customers, it had about twenty-five employees when its first regulated customer, a hospital group, required documented decisions, named accountability and evidence on request. It moved into the platform business in 2016 and in 2024 acquired an operating business in Poland and the Czech Republic, whose legal entity continues inside the group.
Linked registers
Organisation and people, roles, risks, objectives, policies, documents and records, communications, findings, audits and reviews, interested parties, processes
Records, not summaries
The evidence sits in the registers and documents where a real organisation would keep it.
A history
The company has a timeline from 2008, so a structure can be examined before and after it changed.
More than one legal entity
A Swiss parent company and an acquired subsidiary in Poland and the Czech Republic, with customers in several jurisdictions
Why it matters
Judgement develops on material that is incomplete and partly contradictory, as it is in practice. Northstar is built that way on purpose. Because modules enter its history at different points, a governance structure can be seen while it is built, when it is outgrown and when it is rebuilt.
Delivery & dates
How this module reaches you
Delivered live online, combining conceptual framing, discussion, case work and direct interaction with the trainer. In-house and contextualised delivery is available on request.
No public run is scheduled at the moment. Most modules run on request as well as on the public calendar, so tell us the timing you need.
Want this module scheduled?
We will tell you when the next run is scheduled, or run this module in-house with your own case material.
Not sure it is the right module?
Describe your context in a short message and we will tell you honestly.