All departments must have representation at tabletop exercises. The process owner / alternate process owner or both must attend. Position the sign-in sheet near the doorway so people see it as they arrive and you greet them. Before the exercise begins ask if everyone has signed-in so they will getRead More
Whenever I host a tabletop exercise I provide a handy-dandy checklist to all participants. It is a valuable take-away. It helps guide them when reviewing their plan for completeness and finding gaps. It is also a starting point for readiness discussions with their team members. I hope you enjoy the list.Read More
If you have not yet created an invitation, this one may give you some ideas. You can use it as-is or customize it to meet your needs. I vary tabletop invitations to fit the situation. Below is one of the invitations I find useful and well accepted by participants. YouRead More
Hosting tabletop exercises is one of my favorite activities. I suppose that is a good thing, as I have hosted 200+ tabletops during my career. Tabletops have so many valuable aspects. They are a low stress way to test your current plans, identify gaps and improve your ability to respond.Read More
ALL plans must be tested on a regular basis! Tip – Process owners should bring their plans to tabletops and workstation area recovery exercises. They should use them as-is during the exercise. Tip – Plans and strategies must be validated. Our goal is to identify gaps preventing the plan fromRead More
All Plans, Critical Systems, Recovery Strategies, Cyber and Call Trees / Mass Notification Call Lists must be tested and reviewed on a schedule that aligns to your policies and requirements. Testing must validate your plans and systems and improve the resilience of your organization. In sports, smart athletes ‘practice withRead More
The Testing Section of Ultimate Business Continuity drives home the importance of exercising all components of your resilience program. An untested plan is a plan that is doomed to fail. Test, Test, Test. Although I favor the term ‘exercise’ when communicating with employees to lower stress and increase learning, I am going to useRead More
I always keep my antennas up for new ways I can improve business resilience / continuity. Sometimes I come up with ideas that utilize manual improvements but more often than not, my ideas involve technological solutions. The idea we will discuss in this post came to me in a really round-about way. HereRead More
I often asked myself, ‘Why do all business process plans have to be 8 1/2″ x 11″‘?’ I could not come up with a good answer so I began experimenting. In this post we look at another approach, ‘How tiny can be beautiful!’ There is definitely a place for large, detailed, wide-scope,Read More
Although I love technology I am going a bit old-school with this one so we leave nothing to chance. Create awareness among process owners that they should always have access to a paper ‘hard’ copy of their plan. Also, tech it out by making plans available to them in a secure locationRead More