Curious about how to write a project plan that keeps tasks on track and stakeholders satisfied? Much like snagging a ‘just in case’ umbrella on a cloudy day, your contingency plan gives you the reassurance that you have a backup plan — so you don’t end up caught in the rain. Think through all of the potential roadblocks, errors, and issues that could sabotage your project. In some industries, a contingency plan isn’t something that’s nice to have — it’s a must. Think of a pilot having to make an emergency landing or the hospitals that had to get clever to deal with overwhelming demand during the pandemic. If and when something falls apart in the middle of a project, figuring out what your other options are can leave you scrambling.
Project Management Contingency Plan Template
Having a structured template can be the difference between a swift recovery and prolonged downtime. Beyond the financial impact, consider reputational damage, legal consequences and employee morale. For instance, a data breach might result in fines, erode customer trust and lead to negative press coverage. These could include payroll processing, IT infrastructure or regulatory compliance activities (crucial for GDPR compliance). The gap highlights the need to create practical, well-communicated plans that are ready for execution. Integrating both approaches helps your business anticipate challenges and respond swiftly to them.
Disaster Contingency Plan
Contingency planning addresses the “what if” situations and develops a plan that will work around those situations. Risk management is a proactive approach that companies use to prevent loss or disasters. So rather than being reactive like a contingency plan, a risk management plan looks to stop adverse events from happening in the first place.
Step 2: create the contingency plan
Once the process list is created, consider what might disrupt business continuity. Looking at this list, you can see how vulnerable it is to natural disasters or even minor human errors. Having a contingency plan in place enables you to respond to the unforeseen more effectively, adapt to changing conditions, and recover from setbacks more efficiently. The stress tests project how much a bank would lose—if a negative economic event occurred—to determine if the bank has enough capital or funds set aside to survive the event.
- Sometimes it can be hard to justify the importance of putting resources into preparing for something that might never happen.
- Having executive support from the start ensures the plan put forth is approved and also can motivate those at the department level to buy-in as well.
- Whichever reason a contingency plan fits your company’s situations, make sure that it leads to everyone’s benefit.
- You want to make sure you have all the necessary information before drafting your plan, so this step should be the longest.
From there, start shaping your plan, which should include preventive controls, an incidence response plan, a disaster recovery plan, and a business continuity plan. Make sure to provide training to employees, frequent testing, and updating of your plan. Organizations build contingency plans to help them face a variety of threats, including natural disasters, unplanned downtime, data loss, network breaches and sudden shifts in customer demand. A business contingency plan is a backup strategy for your team or organization. Get step-by-step instructions to create an effective contingency plan, so if the unexpected happens, your team can spring into action and get things back on track. You can begin the contingency planning process by completing a contingency plan template so that you’re adequately prepared.
This project management contingency plan template is ideal for creating a comprehensive contingency plan for any type of project. Use this template to define risks and their events or triggers, consider budgetary implications, and define your potential plans of action. Keep tabs on your organization’s comprehensive business contingency plan (BCP) with this distinctive business contingency plan template. This BCP template is useful for determining accurate planning and courses of action to ensure the success of your business’s contingency plan. A contingency plan is a proactive strategy that describes the course of actions or steps the management and staff of an organization need to take in response to an event that could happen in the future.
Davidson says project leaders must be careful not to add too little contingency time — or contingency costs — to a project. contingency plan example For example, if a project is expected to take 200 hours, the team would add an additional 40 hours for contingency time. Experts sometimes recommend adding a rough estimate of contingency to projects.