Contingency vs Succession Plan 2022-12Contingency vs. Succession Plans
City of Northampton, Office of Planning and Sustainability
Community Development Block Grant Program
Date: December 8th, 2022
Summary of Succession and Contingency Plans
This document provides a very brief overview of succession and contingency plans. Having these plans is
often a requirement or recommendation for organizations receiving government funding. Many
organizations already have plans that would fall under these plans even though they use other terms to
describe them such as Disaster Recovery Plan or Continuity of Operations Plan.
Succession Plans describe how to effectively prepare for replacing key personnel due to departure and
other causes.
A contingency plan is for handling other types of events such as natural disasters and computer system
issues that may disrupt daily operations. It focuses on continuous operation and recovery. A contingency
plan consists of multiple components such as information system disaster recovery, snowstorm
response, and provisions for work-from-home if the facility is unavailable.
What is a Succession Plan?
Succession planning is a process for identifying and developing new leadership who can replace
management or other vacant positions resulting from individuals leaving the agency. There is an
intersection between the Succession Plan and Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP); however, there are
also important differences.
A succession plan outlines a strategy that identifies roles and people with the right skills and expertise to
assume positions considered key to the agency’s ongoing operations. Typically, these positions need to
be filled quickly upon vacancy.
Succession plans act as a guide for navigating leadership changes; reducing chaos and concerns from
staff, partners, clients, and funders when leadership positions become vacant; and creating a catalyst for
staff development opportunities
A useful online resources for creating a succession plan is found here.
What is a Contingency Plan?
A Contingency Plan is a set of management policy and procedures designed to restore and maintain
business operations, including computer operations, possibly at an alternate location, in the event of an
emergency, system, failure, or disaster. Contingency planning refers to interim measures to recover
information systems after a disruption. Interim measures may include relocation of information systems
and operations to an alternate site, recovery of information system functions using alternate
equipment, or performance of information system functions using manual methods.
The main goal of contingency planning is the restoration to normal modes of operation while mitigating
against loss of data with minimum cost and disruption to normal business activities after an
unanticipated event.
A useful document on how to conduct a contingency plan is found here.
Contingency Plan Activities:
• Construct contingency response team and assign responsibilities to designated personnel
• Provide guidance to help personnel evaluate IT systems and operations to determine
contingency plan requirements
• Ensure coordination with other teams who participate in the CP process
• Perform Risk Assessment/Preventative Controls considerations to eliminate or mitigate
unacceptable risks identified in the risk assessment
Seven Steps to Contingency Planning
From the web document, https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/contingency-plan
1. Contingency planning policy statement. This policy provides the outline and authorization to
develop a contingency plan.
2. Business impact analysis. BIA identifies and prioritizes the systems that are important to an
organization's business functions.
3. Preventive controls. Proactive measures that prevent system outages and disruptions can
ensure system availability and reduce costs related to contingency measures and lifecycle.
4. Contingency strategies. Thorough recovery strategies ensure that a system may be recovered
fast and completely after a disruption.
5. Contingency plan. This is the action plan. It contains the guidance and procedures for dealing
with a damaged or unavailable system. These detailed plans are tailored to the system's security
impact level and recovery requirements.
6. Testing, training and exercises. Plan testing validates recovery capabilities, training prepares
recovery personnel for plan activation and exercising the plan identifies planning gaps.
Combined, these activities improve plan effectiveness and overall organization preparedness.
7. Plan maintenance. The plan should be updated regularly to remain current with system
enhancements and organizational changes.
Business Continuity vs. Business Contingency Plans
The terms business continuity and business contingency are often used interchangeably. However, they
differ in the following ways:
A business contingency plan is activated soon after the initial event occurs and the IR team has made its
initial assessments and determinations. The contingency plan is used to get specific team members
involved in mitigation efforts. These people make short-term decisions regarding how the incident can
be managed and resolved.
A business continuity plan is for longer terms. If contingency planning activities are insufficient to
restore business operations, it may be necessary to declare a disaster and launch a longer-term business
continuity plan as well as a technology disaster recovery plan. Business continuity plans are designed to
facilitate the recovery and resumption of business activities to as close to normal operations as possible.