Disaster Recovery Journal Summer 2024

for doing a particular task will never go down. Unprecedented outages occur all the time. You might need to put on your teacher hat to help your colleagues understand why practicing manual workarounds is important. Whichever way you slice it, it is impor tant for BC professionals to help their organizations master their manual work arounds. You have to rehearse your Plan B. Ensuring Your Workarounds Truly Work Business continuity has no shortage of complicated methodologies. However, one of the simplest things a BC practitio ner can do is also one of the most benefi cial: ensuring the company’s workarounds are truly functional. Just as theater people rehearse and prepare to enable them to mount polished stage productions, companies should rehearse their manual workarounds to make sure they can execute on them if and when the need arises. By rehearsing their “Plan B’s,” BC professionals can help their organizations ensure their manual workarounds actually work. v

In my experience, however, relatively few organizations have closed the circle by putting their workarounds to the test, to make sure the staff can perform them when the need arises. It’s not enough to have plans to man ually take orders, ship products, track inventory, and run payroll. The company has to make sure those plans have been carefully thought through and everything needed to execute on them – whether it’s special equipment, advance preparations, or training for staff – is in place. Like Putting on a Play The use of the term “rehearsal” is fitting because being able to successfully per form a workaround has a lot in common with putting on a play. In theater, a long distance separates having a script from being able to mount an entertaining production for a paying audience. Even with a brilliant director and great cast, putting on a polished pro duction requires rehearsal by the perform ers and preparation of the sets, costumes, and so on. Similarly, in business continuity, there’s a big difference between having a planned manual workaround and being able to execute on the workaround under pressure. No matter how talented your people are, rehearsal and preparation are required to close the gap. The BC Practitioner’s Role Let’s look more specifically at the BC

practitioner’s role in relation to this issue. For many people, working indepen dently on a BIA or recovery plan comes more naturally than persuading a team from another department to participate in an exercise. Nevertheless, the effort has to be made because the ultimate goal of the position requires it. The BC practitio ner’s role is primarily one of coordinating preparations and training, working with the departments to help them master their workarounds fits squarely in that basket. Here are some additional consider ations: n The kind of rehearsal we’re talking about doesn’t necessarily mean everyone has to perform the workaround for a full day (for example). Having a portion of the team work manually for two hours can go a long way toward ensuring a workaround is viable and executable. n In choosing which workarounds to practice, start with the ones for processes whose interruption would cause the greatest impact to the organization (as identified in the risk assessment). n It’s worth remembering these workarounds are not separate from the recovery plan; they are the plan. In working with the departments to practice their manual workarounds, you are helping your organization get better at executing on its recovery plans. n Be prepared for pushback by people who say there’s no point in rehearsing a workaround because the primary method

Richard Long is a senior advisory con sultant and practice team leader for MHA Consulting, where he successfully leads international and domestic disaster recov ery, technology assessment, crisis manage

ment, and risk mitigation engagements.

20 DISASTER RECOVERY JOURNAL | SUMMER 2024