Every disaster recovery plan needs to be tested. No matter how your organization tests its DR plan – whether through simulated failover/failback, or progressive component-by-component testing, or a tabletop walk-through – you need a way to gauge the results of the test. You need to verify that your DR plan will work in the event of a real disaster. This is where the DR test scorecard comes in.
Benefits of a DR Test Scorecard
- Ensures You’re Ready for a Serious Event
A DR test scorecard will give your organization an indication of how things would go in the event of a disaster. Were your RTOs and RPOs reasonable? Did all the apps become operational? Were all files accessible? Were the DR team members able to do what they had to do? Would your organization get through and survive? - Helps You Fine Tune Your DR Plan
Testing your DR plan is not a one-time thing. It is something that ought to happen on an as-needed, or regular basis, perhaps annually. A DR test scorecard helps you assess the efficiency of your DR processes by improving speed and reducing effort (and cost). The test identifies potential snags, logic problems, unaccommodated changes or errors that could become big problems in an actual “situation”. A DR test scorecard helps you drive continuous improvement in your DR preparedness through progressively higher levels of testing. - Provides Proof of a DR Plan
Senior management or third-party auditors will always be asking where all the investment on DR planning and testing is going, and looking for tangible evidence of “risk reduction”. A DR test scorecard is a simple way to provide documentary evidence of where the money is going and what DR testing activities have been successful. - Helps Bring the Whole Organization On Board
A DR test scorecard can help educate, train and familiarize your entire organization, and especially your chosen DR team members, with a contingency “mindset”. Summarizing and reporting the results of DR testing procedures demonstrates how serious the organization is about DR testing, and also encourages team members to offer feedback on any aspect of the plan and on their ability to execute their roles.
Sample of DR Test Scorecard
Click here to see a sample of a DR test scorecard from a moderately sophisticated DR program, where testing is a regular, mandated annual exercise for a multi-business unit organization. Each line item on the scorecard actually represents a group of activities, which would be represented by pages of actual procedures and scripts. For example, “PROD shutdown” on line 3 is shorthand for important preparatory tasks such as backing up all production databases prior to the test in order to avoid any outside chance of failover-failback file corruption.
In other words, the DR test scorecard would typically summarize 50 or more pages of details representing all the activities contained in the plan. Some aspects of the DR testing don’t even appear on this particular scorecard, including links to outside cloud storage services, or internal/external stakeholder communication activities, which might be critical in an actual disaster.
Scorecards Reflect Strategy, Scope and Criteria of Your DR Testing
The DR test scorecard helps your organization keep tabs on every important detail of your DR program. Whether your DR testing strategy is iterative or progressive, the scorecard should improve your preparedness for the next round, taking into account the continuous evolutions and your updating of production systems, and the improved participation and preparedness of team members. The scorecard must also reflect the approach and breadth of your DR testing, including your focus on specific, critical tiers, applications and technical components, so that is verifiable and up to date.
And the DR test scorecard also helps your organization assess the emphasis or criteria for evaluating your plan. You may need to appropriately weight test scores between preparations and follow-ups, target RTOs and RPOs, and the “efficiency” of the team members working with recovery procedures, technologies and facilities.
Because, if you are going to commit time and resources to a viable DR plan, you ought to make sure that the evaluation of the plan is as good as it can possibly be.
