Using Enterprise Architecture to Assist Business Continuity Planning in Large Public Organizations

Business continuity planning (BCP) requires a holistic approach that considers several technological and organizational aspects. Currently, there is a lack of scientifically validated solutions to support continuity planning that are based on standards and best practice frameworks, capable of addressing the complexity and specific needs of large public organizations. In this work, we propose to use Enterprise Architecture (EA) artifacts, based on the ArchiMate modelling language, to assist continuity planning. We demonstrated the proposal in a large public organization, using an ex post scenario. We evaluated the proposal using the demonstration, evaluation questionnaires, as well as group sessions, to measure the goal efficacy, the environment consistency and the structural quality. The main scientific contributions of this paper are the validation of EA's usefulness for assisting BCP, as well as a set of EA viewpoints for assisting BCP related initiatives.