BMIS 2585 - Current Topics in MIS: Business Continuity Management

From Information Systems at Pitt Business

Business Continuity Management
BMIS 2585
Credits:	1.5
Prerequisites:	none

Information technology is an important part of any modern firm’s operations. When an organization’s information systems (IS) fail to work properly, organizations often must cease operations until the problems are addressed. At the same time, systems are increasingly complex, dynamic, and imperfect. Hence it is difficult (if not impossible) to develop and maintain reliabile operations. Yet this is exactly what mangers must do. For this reason it is important for managers to understand the strategies and techniques of business continuity management (BCM).

However, while much as been written about business environment’s being dynamic, uncertain, and chaotic organizations often fail to manage their activities and systems with this in mind. Senior management treats planning for hypothetical disasters as, at best, a cost to be minimized or, at worst an indication of organizational incompetence. Middle managers see these activities as a burden, distracting them from real work while providing little or no benefit. Even after the worries about Y2K, the catastrophic events of September 2001, and large scale power failures in the Northeast U.S., managing organizational processes and systems in a way that supports ongoing, reliable operations remains difficult.

In this Current Topics in MIS course we examine the challenges associated with developing and managing systems and processes in support of reliable operations. Specifically, we investigate (i) the types of business continuity problems that managers face, (ii) techniques and strategies that organizations can use to address these problems, and (iii) the challenges managers face when attempting to support ongoing business continuity management programs.