Consider a tabletop exercise in which a company’s principal operating system becomes unavailable. Technology has a recovery procedure. Operations has a manual workaround. Finance has an emergency approval process. Customer service has a prepared message. The discussion stalls when someone asks who can authorise a promise to a customer before the team knows which orders it can fulfil.
Every department has prepared. The business has yet to decide how those preparations work together. That is where a continuity exercise should concentrate: on the decisions that connect individual capabilities to the service the organisation must keep delivering.
Start with what must continue
A continuity plan organised only around departments can miss the service that crosses them. Fulfilling an order may require customer records, inventory visibility, credit authority, warehouse access and transport. Restoring one component leaves the service unavailable if another essential dependency is still missing.
Define the service in terms a customer or other affected stakeholder would recognise. Establish what could temporarily change: the range of products, delivery frequency, operating hours or method of support. Identify the obligations and safety constraints that remain. A temporary reduction in service should be a considered choice, with an owner and a clear limit.
Technology recovery has an established role in that work. NIST’s contingency-planning guidance links information-system planning with wider emergency plans and organisational resilience.1 Leadership must connect those technical priorities to the business activity they support. A restored application is useful evidence, but the team must also establish whether it can safely resume the intended work.
Put a real decision inside the scenario
A scenario becomes demanding when it requires a choice the plan has not already answered. An exercise might introduce a critical supplier that cannot confirm availability, a recovery estimate that keeps moving, or a decision-maker who is unreachable. Ask participants what they would do with the information available at that moment.
Require them to identify the authority they would use, the information they would need and the people they would contact. When the answer is ‘we would escalate’, ask to whom, through which channel and within what time. Escalation is incomplete if it moves uncertainty without establishing who can resolve it.
Keep the exercise proportionate. The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides continuity exercise materials designed to support adaptable tabletop exercises, including their design, conduct and evaluation.2 A focused discussion can examine one difficult hand-off without staging a large event. The scope should be clear about what has been tested and what still requires practical demonstration.
Make the workaround earn its place
Return to the illustrative systems outage. Operations proposes recording orders manually until service resumes. That may be sensible, but it requires current price and stock information, authority to approve exceptions, controls against duplicate orders and records for reconciling transactions afterwards.
A workaround should have a defined capacity and period of use. A process that handles a few urgent orders may become unreliable when applied to the full backlog. Additional people may help only if they have the required knowledge, access and supervision. An assumed alternative needs the same attention as the primary process.
External dependencies deserve particular care. A supplier’s general assurance of resilience does not establish that it can deliver the specific service the company needs during the same disruption. Identify what is confirmed, what depends on shared infrastructure and which alternatives would require prior agreement or preparation.
Agree what counts as recovery
Recovery can be declared too early when a team measures the component it owns. A system is available, a site has reopened or a supplier has resumed deliveries. The service may still depend on data checks, a growing backlog, quality review or approvals that have not been completed.
Set an observable acceptance test for the essential service. In the order example, that might require a transaction to pass through acceptance, fulfilment, recording and reconciliation with the agreed controls in place. Decide who can confirm that test and what evidence they will retain. Protection of people and applicable safety obligations remain a condition of resumption.
Returning to normal operations also needs ownership. Temporary authorisations must be reviewed, manual records reconciled and customers given an accurate account of outstanding commitments. Otherwise, the organisation can restore visible activity while carrying unresolved errors into the following weeks. Include this transition in the exercise.
Five questions for the next exercise
Use one essential service to test the connection between the plan, the people and the evidence of recovery.
| Decision | Question to test | Evidence to retain |
|---|---|---|
| Prioritise | What service must continue, and at what temporary level? | An agreed service scope and its operating limits |
| Authorise | Who can decide when the usual approver is unavailable? | A clear delegation and a reachable deputy |
| Operate | Can the workaround handle the intended workload? | Results of a proportionate practical test |
| Resume | What must be demonstrated before normal service returns? | Acceptance criteria and the responsible approver |
| Improve | What would show that the identified gap is closed? | A completed action supported by verification |
An illustrative business exercise structure. Emergency response, safety duties and sector-specific requirements need their own appropriate arrangements.
Close the finding with a demonstration
An exercise usually produces actions. The quality of the follow-through depends on what qualifies as completion. Updating a contact list can resolve an outdated number. It cannot establish that the nominated person has authority to make the decision, access to the relevant information or a workable deputy.
For each material finding, state the capability that must improve and the evidence needed to show it. A revised procedure may need a short retest. An alternative supplier may need a documented commitment. A manual process may need a controlled trial at a realistic workload. The evidence should match the gap identified.
Bring unresolved choices to leadership. Some gaps require expenditure, a change in service promises or acceptance of a defined exposure. They should not remain indefinitely with a coordinator who lacks authority to resolve them. Review the plan when systems, suppliers, operating locations or responsibilities change, so that preparation continues to describe the business that actually exists.
Choose one essential service and exercise the first decision that cannot wait for perfect information. The discussion should end with a clearer authority, a better-tested assumption or a capability that needs investment. A plan earns confidence when people can demonstrate how they would use it.
Sources
- NIST SP 800-34 Revision 1: Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems (opens in a new tab)
Provides the referenced relationship between information-system contingency planning, emergency plans and organisational resilience. Its federal information-system context is distinct from the illustrative corporate exercise described here.
- US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA): Continuity of Essential Functions Exercise Starter Kits (opens in a new tab)
Supports the use of adaptable tabletop exercises and structured evaluation. The order-processing example, management questions and acceptance tests are illustrative Vogabe analysis, not a prescribed FEMA procedure.
