Resources

Resources

This page brings together a small number of resources I’ve personally found useful in developing my thinking about business continuity and resilience. Over time, it may grow to include notes, diagrams, or tools of my own — but for now, it reflects the influences and references I return to most often.  

Professional Bodies & Learning 

The Business Continuity Institute (BCI)
The BCI offers a wide range of resources for practitioners, including guidance, webinars, research, and professional development opportunities. It’s a useful place to explore both foundational knowledge and evolving practice across business continuity and resilience.

The BCI also runs a mentoring scheme, matching practitioners who want support with experienced professionals. I’m part of that scheme as a volunteer mentor. It’s a free service, and availability depends on capacity — but it can be a valuable way to think through challenges, career development, or professional judgement with someone outside your organisation. 

Books I’ve found useful 

These aren’t exhaustive recommendations, and they won’t suit everyone. But the following books have helped me clarify my own thinking about business continuity — particularly when it comes to explaining concepts clearly and grounding theory in practice.

I’ve linked the titles simply for convenience, in case you’d like to explore them further.  

Business Continuity for Dummies – Stuart Sterling et al.
A surprisingly clear and accessible overview of business continuity fundamentals. I’ve found it particularly useful for explaining concepts to people new to the discipline, or for sense-checking assumptions against a plain-English explanation.

Practical Business Continuity Management (books 1 & 2) – Andy Osborne
These are two of the books I return to most often. They’re made up of short, punchy chapters — sometimes no more than half a page — which makes it easy to take in ideas “in a nutshell”. 

Andy is clearly speaking from experience. He writes frankly, in plain English, with a light touch of humour. The books are full of practical tips and examples, and they’re easy to dip into anywhere — you don’t have to read them cover to cover to get value from them.

Andy comes across as friendly, knowledgeable, and experienced across business continuity and related disciplines. It’s the kind of clarity and grounded practice I aspire to in my own work.

Standards and Formal Guidance

There are other standards and guidance documents that intersect with business continuity and resilience, but this is the one I return to most often in practice. 

ISO 22301 — Business Continuity Management Systems
ISO 22301 is the international standard for business continuity management systems. It’s not an easy read — and if you’re suffering from insomnia, it may well help.

Joking aside, I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve picked this up and referenced it when designing, reviewing, or sense-checking a BCMS, or a component part such as a Business Impact Analysis. Used well, it provides a solid anchor for thinking about scope, structure, and intent — without dictating exactly how something must be done.

If you have responsibility for business continuity or resilience, you won’t go far wrong having a copy of the standard to hand — not as a rulebook, but as a reference point.

Good Practice Guidelines - The global guide to good practice in business continuity (aka The GPG)
An excellent resource taking you through every step of the  Business Continuity Management System.  It's another guide that I reach for when I want to dig a bit deeper into a subject, or am looking for a good way to explain something. New editions are  published periodically (current version is edition 7.0). I still look at my old copies too! You can get hard and soft copies of the GPG from the BCI website.