7-day TPM Interview Course

Business impact analysis (BIA) predicts the consequences of disruption of a business function and process and gathers information needed to develop recovery strategies. Potential loss scenarios should be identified during a risk assessment.

Business impact analysis consists of 6 major steps:

1. Picking a team: The TPM should identify all the critical stakeholders that will be involved for any program they manage.

2. Setting the scope and objectives: We’ve covered this in detail in TPM Email Course: Day 1 — Scope Management.

3. Gathering information: BIA should examine four key supports for operations: people, facilities, tools (including things like equipment and computing infrastructure), and materials/suppliers.

4. Documenting findings: At this point, the team will start to review and refine its findings. You may want to go back to some of the key people you interviewed early in the process to discuss your outcomes with them. Then, the BIA group will write a report. A BIA report contains some standard elements:

• Executive summary
• Objectives and scope
• Description of methodologies
• Detailed discussion of findings
• Recommendations
• Supporting documents

5. Gathering information: BIA should examine four key supports for operations: people, facilities, tools (including things like equipment and computing infrastructure), and materials/suppliers.

6. Next steps: Once you complete BIA and have submitted to leadership you may receive some feedback. 

FAANG+ companies appreciate such detailed answers as it proves you can proactively manage risk prior to program execution. 

Here’s another popular problem you can practice:

Your CTO wants you to build a risk reporting tool to measure the potential risks in engineering.  How do you go about building this tool?