Disaster Recovery Journal Spring 2023

Key Point 1: The theory “resiliency is the enemy of efficiency” is dead While I hate to identify our profession as fine purveyors of FUD (fear/uncer tainty/doubt), there are real, demonstrable cases where resilience is not the enemy of efficiency. An Airbus A-320 has three sets of control systems for hydraulic lines. This triple redundancy takes up precious weight that could be used for fuel or cargo. Airbus could have stopped at two fully redundant and physically separated systems. Instead, they chose to add an additional system to ensure the airplane can function despite the worst levels of damage to the airframe. This extra set of hydraulics is not considered a waste among the pilots, maintenance engineers, and executives running airlines. The extra redundancy is accepted as the ability to continue to function despite the worst disruption, turning potential catastrophe into minor inconvenience. This is the mentality executives need to take. Resilience is not a drain on efficiency, it is a normal and accepted practice in operational costs. We as professionals can change the narrative around resilience from one of additional expense to part of the primary design. Southwest’s failure shows that resiliency is not an enemy of efficiency. It can enable efficiency as disruption recov ery is a major and costly part of opera tions. Over time, no one will remember the inciting incident, but everyone will remember how the response was handled. Key Point 2: Technical debt is corporate debt Technical debt is a concept well known to CIOs and their staff but isn’t familiar to finance, operations, or front line business people. At the end of a system lifespan, the application and its component hardware become “technical debt.” Just like regular debt, tech debt can come in many forms. For younger or smaller orgs, code-based tech debt can plague even the most online system, while legacy orgs could have entire com puter platform’s worth of debt. At the end of the day, systems that can’t keep up with the rest of the world

Southwest Airlines Holiday Meltdown ‘Remember the SWAlamo’ By MATT DOERNHOEFER W ell, that happened. We witnessed the complete failure of an airline’s processes at the whims of a series of unfortunate but predict able events. Disruption is expected in airline operations, as weather patterns will constantly challenge the best flight plans. However, in this instance, Southwest This is a defining event for Southwest Airlines. Incalculable brand damage, indeterminate regulatory fines, and reimbursement of expenses for thousands of passengers all potentially threaten the solvency of the airline. There were reports of individual heroism managing to get some airplanes out. But in the end, the event showed the vulnerability of manual processes and their inability to work at scale.

took the term “disruption” to a new level. Recriminations are still happening, but the general consensus is (at time of writ ing) the technical debt collectors came, and they were sent by Tony Soprano.

So, what does this mean for the resil ience professional? What can we learn from this? I suggest this be our “Alamo” moment going forward. Let’s break it down into two key points:

22 DISASTER RECOVERY JOURNAL | SPRING 2023