When should you start your exercise program?
The conventional approach to exercising or testing a contingency plan is to begin once the plan (or a major segment) is completed. I submit that there are compelling advantages to starting the program much sooner.
The principal purpose of any testing or exercising program is typically to ensure that the plans, procedures and so forth are going to work when called upon for the “ultimate” test – i.e., when the plans are activated for a real disaster declaration. In this respect, testing after plans are completed generally does the job.
One risk of waiting to this stage to begin the test program is that management attention (not to mention budget and resources) often start to fade around that point. On the other hand, the process of developing and implementing the exercise/test program early on can offer many opportunities.
For starters, consider that many of the people who will be involved in the development, implementation, and eventual activation of the plans may be unclear about business continuity, or, to put it politely, unmotivated. By introducing the exercise program early on – in my experience, often even before the plans and procedures are developed – you are far more likely to have motivated, engaged participants at every stage of the process.
As a bonus, those early participants are very likely to be opinionated – a very good thing if you are (as you should be) looking to make sure all the bases are covered and realities addressed during your plan development process. In short, there’s a great opportunity in being called a ‘blithering idiot’ for making a dumb, early mistake, rather than waiting until an entire plan has been developed.
As an additional bonus, your early participants will gain an experience level, both with the exercise process and with the actual plans. So, when you get to the later stages of plan developments, there are likely to be fewer unpleasant surprises.
Lastly, when the plans and procedures are essentially complete, there is the opportunity to present to your management “completed and exercised” deliverables as opposed to “completed and ready to exercise.” And, should your management in their infinite wisdom choose to divert resources from business continuity exercising to other worthy projects, as often happens in the real world, you will have already established the viability of your plans and built a foundation for future exercising.
I have been saying for over twenty years that “an unexercised contingency plan could be worse than no plan at all.” Nothing in my experience over the past two decades has changed my opinion. By building your exercise program into the early stages of your plan development, you are ensuring the likelihood of success.
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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 – the only book on this subject – for valuable tips, techniques and insights. Now only $49.00!
Tags: exercising, Testing
