Stop The Insanity: If You Don't Exercise Your Business Continuity Plans, You Aren't Prepared

Everyone knows you must exercise your business continuity (BC) plans. However, in dozens of inquiries and consulting engagements with enterprise clients each quarter, Forrester finds that BC managers are lucky if they can exercise a portion of a particular BC plan once per year. In fact, we find that BC exercise programs as a whole are quite immature. Common pitfalls are designing unrealistic exercise scenarios, failing to run exercises often enough, and neglecting to integrate with other teams, such as crisis management and IT. Most enterprises, even with today's level of investment in advanced technology and services, are still unprepared for disasters. In 2011 to date, the US has already experienced its 10th billion-dollar disaster, officially breaking the annual record dating back to 1980. With these sobering statistics, in addition to the increased pressure from customers and stakeholders to provide 24x7 services and protect shareholder value, there is no excuse for unpreparedness. And you're not prepared if you're not exercising. To mature BC exercise programs, Forrester offers BC managers 10 recommendations from peers and industry experts.