In crafting their recovery plans, most organizations identify and prioritize the technology and equipment their most critically time sensitive departments and functions depend on. However, there is one type of dependency that is often overlooked, with potentially serious consequences: the cross-departmental dependency.
Critical Processes and Their Dependencies
Perhaps the most fundamental concept in business continuity (BC) is that of the critical business process (or department, function, application, or system). This is an entity that must be restored swiftly after an outage in order to avoid significant damage to the organization.
Closely connected with this is the concept of dependencies, resources of various kinds that mission-critical entities require in order to function properly. These dependencies must be operational before mission-critical processes, departments, and so on can be restored to full functionality.
How the BIA Uncovers Key Processes and Dependencies
The business impact analysis (BIA) is the tool we use to identify which business functions are the most critically time-sensitive—and therefore which should be prioritized for recovery.
The BIA helps us work out when the different business functions should be recovered, typically expressed through Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), such as within the first 4 hours, within the first 24 hours, and so on.
The BIA can also help uncover the critical dependencies discussed above, so that recovery plans ensure those dependencies are up and running when needed. However, most organizations do an uneven job in this area, potentially impairing their ability to recover.
The Dependency That Is Frequently Missed
Most organizations with mature BC programs are effective at identifying and planning for technical dependencies, such as key applications, servers, and communications systems. These tend to be well documented and incorporated into recovery strategies.
However, one important type of dependency is often missed — and that oversight can have significant consequences: cross-departmental dependencies.
What Is a Cross-Departmental Dependency?
A cross-departmental dependency arises when one department needs another to be operational in order to carry out its own work.
They typically involve approvals, data handoffs, shared personnel, compliance checks, or any other kind of task that one group cannot complete without input or action from another.
Because these relationships aren’t always obvious, they’re easy to miss during the recovery planning process.
And when they’re overlooked, recovery plans can fall apart even if all the “right” applications are restored on time.
How Overlooking These Dependencies Causes Problems
Ignoring cross-departmental dependencies can lead to two costly mistakes in recovery planning: understating or overstating how quickly a department needs to be brought back online.
In the first case, a department may report that it has a long recovery window, not realizing that a more critical team depends on it.
For example, Legal might say they can be down for five days without major impact. But Procurement, which needs to be operational within three days, might depend on Legal to review contracts and authorize emergency vendor agreements.
If Legal isn’t recovered early enough, Procurement can’t function, and critical supply chain activities stall as a result.
The opposite also happens. A department might say it needs to be recovered immediately because many other units depend on it, but it could be that those other departments have long recovery windows.
Take, for example, a Research group that seeks an RTO of 24 hours, arguing that Product Development or Quality Assurance rely on their data. It might be the case, however, that those departments aren’t scheduled for recovery until after the first 72 hours. In that case, Research's work, while important, doesn’t justify being placed at the front of the recovery queue.
In both scenarios, failing to identify and verify these functional relationships leads to poor prioritization, delaying recovery in the first instance and wasting resources in the second.
Accounting for Cross-Departmental Dependencies in the BIA
Given the risks of overlooking cross-departmental dependencies, organizations should take care to actively surface and account for them when conducting BIAs and writing recovery plans.
This means going beyond simply asking departments when they think they need to be recovered. It requires digging into who they rely on to get their work done—and who, in turn, relies on them.
The goal is not just to capture what's critical in isolation, but to understand how criticality flows through the organization. That bigger picture allows for more accurate recovery prioritization—and fewer surprises when disruption actually strikes.
Achieving a More Complete Picture of Recovery Priorities
Cross-departmental dependencies are a commonly overlooked factor in recovery planning, but failing to account for them can lead to serious missteps. Departments may be brought back too late or too early, disrupting other functions and misallocating recovery resources.
By identifying these functional links during the BIA, organizations can ensure recovery priorities reflect how work actually gets done. The result is a more accurate, coordinated, and resilient recovery plan—one that works not just on paper, but in practice.
Further Reading
