Add a “Scribe” to your next disaster recovery exercise
One of the products of testing your business continuity/disaster recovery program should be a documentation process to identify what went right, what went wrong, and what is still open in terms of issues. No issues during testing? Good for you, but not very helpful to strengthening your contingency plan.
Traditionally, test teams have expected each team (business units, operations, network, database, etc.) to keep track and report after the test. Well, in the heat of battle it is also traditional for most people to omit documentation and the keeping of notes, chronology, status, etc. It simply does not get done. So, when the post-test debriefing meeting takes place it is probably that much important information is missing.
What kind of information may be lost? For example, consider the following points:
- Number of test objectives met, and how long did each one take.
- A list of specific issues and suggested corrective action.
- A clear documentation of lost time due to a vendor issue.
- Good documentation that can be used to obtain additional test time in the event of vendor problems.
- An updated recovery timeline. Actual vs. expected.
- A general format for all test team members to record comments, suggestions, etc.
- And more…..
The suggested approach is to simply assign a person who is very good as a listener and also as a fact-finder. It takes a bit of perseverance and also a large bit of compassion. It takes extra care to pull information out during stressful times. It also takes care to remind people to stay on track in terms of reporting status, issues, problems, timings, etc.
This is the job of the Scribe. The right person, who has no other test responsibilities, with a laptop and a set of the test objectives can pay back a huge return at the end of the test process. Timings will be reported, issues identified, delays, fixes, etc can all be discussed at the post-test meeting with some degree of thoroughness.
As a final thought, most test team members are glad to have a scribe. It takes the burden of documenting off their shoulders.
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An unexercised contingency plan could be worse than no plan at all!
Be sure to read Disaster Recovery Testing: Exercising Your Contingency Plan, Philip Jan Rothstein, FBCI, Editor for valuable tips, techniques and insights.
Tags: business continuity exercise, disaster recovery exercise, disaster recovery testing
