ISO 22317 Business Impact Analysis Methods Training Course

Course overview

Business continuity plans often fail at the point where recovery priorities are set. Teams may have process lists, risk registers and recovery templates, yet lack defensible evidence for deciding which activities must be restored first, what downtime is tolerable, which dependencies are critical, and what resources are needed to resume operations. This ISO 22317 Business Impact Analysis Methods Training Course equips participants to run a structured BIA that produces decisions senior management, regulators, auditors and operational owners can examine and support.

Participants learn to apply the guidance in ISO 22317:2021 alongside ISO 22301:2019 business continuity management system requirements. The course covers BIA scope definition, activity and product/service analysis, impact category design, maximum acceptable outage and recovery time objective setting, minimum business continuity objective analysis, dependency mapping, resource requirement assessment, data validation and prioritisation. Participants practise converting interview and questionnaire evidence into a documented BIA methodology, impact assessment scales, recovery-priority matrix and management-ready findings.

Delivery combines instructor-led method demonstrations with facilitated workshops, completed BIA examples and peer review of evidence quality. Participants work through a realistic operational disruption scenario and build a BIA pack using structured worksheets, interview prompts, impact scoring criteria and dependency maps. They leave with a reusable ISO 22317-aligned BIA toolkit, including a scoping template, stakeholder plan, data-collection questionnaire, scoring model and report structure that can be adapted to their own organisation.

The course is designed for business continuity practitioners, resilience leads, risk professionals and operational managers who need to establish, refresh or quality-assure a BIA programme. It is particularly valuable where recovery objectives must be justified across complex services, regulated operations, outsourced providers or interdependent sites.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Define a BIA scope, objectives, assumptions and assessment boundaries aligned to ISO 22317
• Design impact categories and measurable scoring criteria for financial, operational, legal, customer and safety consequences
• Set maximum acceptable outage, recovery time objective and minimum business continuity objective values from evidence
• Map upstream, downstream, technology, people, site and supplier dependencies for critical activities
• Create BIA interview guides and questionnaires that obtain consistent operational data from process owners
• Analyse time-based impacts and rank products, services and activities using a documented prioritisation method
• Validate BIA findings through challenge sessions, evidence checks and cross-functional stakeholder review
• Produce an ISO 22317-aligned BIA report and recovery-priority matrix for management approval

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Business Continuity Managers — who need a repeatable method for setting defensible recovery priorities
• Business Continuity Analysts — who collect, analyse and document BIA evidence across business functions
• Operational Resilience Managers — who must connect important business services to disruption tolerance and dependencies
• Risk Managers — who need to distinguish business-impact analysis from threat and vulnerability assessment
• Health, Safety and Environment Managers — who assess life-safety, environmental and regulatory consequences of operational interruption
• Process Owners and Operational Managers — who provide recovery requirements and must validate practical restoration priorities

Requirements and prerequisites

This is a foundation-to-intermediate course. Participants should understand their organisation’s main products, services, departments or operational processes and be able to discuss how disruption affects customers, compliance, revenue, safety or delivery. Familiarity with basic business continuity terms such as incident, recovery, critical activity and dependency is useful, but not essential. Participants should be comfortable using spreadsheets and completing structured templates; Microsoft Excel will be used for workshop exercises. No prior ISO 22317 certification, audit experience, risk-modelling software or completed business continuity plan is required. Complete beginners should expect a method-focused introduction before progressing to applied BIA analysis.

Training methodology

The five-day programme uses short instructor-led sessions to explain ISO 22317 concepts, followed by structured application to a realistic multi-site service disruption case. Participants build BIA components in sequence: scope, impact scales, interview questions, time-based impact assessments, dependency maps and prioritisation outputs. Facilitated group work tests assumptions and resolves conflicting recovery requirements between business functions. The instructor reviews sample evidence and common BIA failures, including confused RTOs and unvalidated dependencies. On the final day, participants prepare an application plan for launching or improving a BIA cycle in their own organisation.

Course outline

Day 1: ISO 22317 foundations and BIA scope

• Purpose of business impact analysis within an ISO 22301 management system
• ISO 22317:2021 principles, terminology and expected BIA outputs
• Distinguishing BIA from risk assessment, crisis management and recovery planning
• Defining products, services, activities and organisational assessment boundaries
• Setting BIA objectives, assumptions, exclusions and planning horizons
• Identifying BIA stakeholders, process owners and approval authorities
• Planning a BIA project using scope statements, milestones and evidence requirements

Workshop: Participants create a BIA charter and stakeholder map for a simulated organisation with multiple operational services.

Day 2: Impact analysis and data collection

• Designing impact categories for financial, customer, legal, safety and environmental consequences
• Creating impact scales, thresholds and scoring definitions that process owners can apply
• Assessing time-based impacts across escalating disruption periods
• Selecting BIA data-collection methods: interviews, questionnaires, workshops and document review
• Writing interview questions that reveal consequences rather than opinions
• Capturing products, services, activities, volumes, peak periods and contractual obligations
• Managing inconsistent, incomplete or biased information from business stakeholders

Workshop: Participants draft an impact-assessment scale and conduct a paired BIA interview using a structured questionnaire.

Day 3: Recovery objectives and prioritisation

• Determining maximum acceptable outage from time-based impact evidence
• Setting recovery time objectives without treating them as preferred restoration targets
• Establishing minimum business continuity objectives for degraded operations
• Identifying recovery point objectives and information-loss tolerance where applicable
• Ranking critical products, services and activities using prioritisation matrices
• Reconciling competing priorities between customer-facing and enabling functions
• Documenting rationale, assumptions and evidence for management decision-making

Workshop: Participants calculate recovery objectives and produce a ranked recovery-priority matrix from completed case evidence.

Day 4: Dependencies, resources and validation

• Mapping upstream and downstream dependencies across business activities
• Identifying people, premises, technology, information, equipment and supplier requirements
• Analysing single points of failure and shared-resource conflicts
• Assessing minimum staffing, skills, workarounds and manual-processing requirements
• Capturing third-party and internal service-level dependencies
• Validating BIA findings through cross-functional challenge and evidence review
• Translating BIA outputs into continuity strategy and recovery solution requirements

Workshop: Participants build a dependency map and minimum-resource profile for a critical service, then test it in a validation workshop.

Day 5: BIA reporting and organisational application

• Structuring an ISO 22317-aligned BIA methodology document
• Creating BIA reports, executive summaries and recovery-priority dashboards
• Using Microsoft Excel to consolidate scores, objectives and dependency data
• Presenting recovery priorities and resource gaps to senior management
• Linking BIA outputs to continuity plans, exercises, supplier management and ISO 22301 review
• Setting BIA review triggers, ownership and periodic refresh cycles
• Applying quality checks for traceability, consistency, approval and audit evidence

Workshop: Participants assemble a management-ready BIA pack and complete a 90-day implementation plan for their own workplace.

Tools & standards covered

ISO 22317:2021, ISO 22301:2019, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Visio

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions