Never let them see you sweat – In a disaster recovery exercise that is!
by. Michele Dowls
Why am I so nervous when I’m preparing for Disaster Recovery or Tabletop Exercise?
Anxiety is a completely natural reaction! One you’ll definitely experience during a real life event. Whether you are responsible for declaring the disaster, planning the exercise or overseeing the plan for your organization, recognize and accept the reaction in yourself and others.
You’ve been planning for weeks, months, or years. You want everything to go smoothly. Have all systems, processes and services been accounted for within the Business Impact Analysis? Did something get overlooked? Have we planned everything out correctly with our third party vendors? My test results are going to be viewed by the examiners. Are they going to be satisfied with the level of testing that was performed? What if something goes wrong? Are we prepared to do something differently?
Here are some quick tips to stop that anxiety through better preparation:
- Prepare scripts for your exercises including expected outcome (Recovery Time Objectives, Recovery Point Objectives, etc).
- Note variations as they occur and make changes to procedures to better define or clarify.
- Use these scripts as a guide to keep you moving forward and growing the scope of your tests.