Critical vs. Time-Critical

There is a difference; a big difference.

It’s probably safe to assume that every process within your business is critical to some degree. Some processes enable your core business, and some processes support it. Knowing which processes are critical is important, but it is much more important to know the time-criticality of each process.

Nobody in your organization wants to be labeled as “non-critical”. If you want to collect accurate, honest information about your business processes, don’t make people chose whether what they do is critical or non-critical.

Labeling processes as critical or non-critical is a trap and it is the reason that many business continuity plans fail, or waste money unnecessarily. Just because a process is deemed critical doesn’t mean that it needs to be resilient or recoverable immediately. By the same token, even non-critical processes can have a serious impact if they are unavailable for too long, or at certain times in the business cycle.

If you understand the time-criticality of a business process you will know how much it costs to be out over time, and you can determine the most appropriate recovery time objective (RTO). Recovery and resilience can waste money if they are not applied at the right time. As well, some business processes are cyclical in their criticality; they are more important at certain times, dates, or intervals. Knowing the time-criticality allows you to make the right decisions about when a process needs to be back up.