A recovery exercise has no defined start or finish

What to change

Agree what the recovery measurement includes. The practice's useful question is how long the defined service remains unavailable, not just how quickly a file command runs. Mark the starting condition, required permissions, restoration steps and acceptance checks before the drill. Record pauses and unresolved dependencies honestly. A fictional rehearsal can expose the measurement boundaries without creating a real outage or encouraging staff to rush past checks to achieve an attractive number.

A worked example

Illustrative example

Illustrative test: The drill ends only after the agreed deep-route and asset checks pass.

How to check the result

The measured duration has clear boundaries and reproducible acceptance evidence.

A mistake to avoid

Excluding difficult preparation steps can make a recovery estimate misleading.

Your action checklist

Use these checks to prepare a discussion with your team or supplier. Tick a check when you have recorded the decision or evidence, rather than when a feature has simply been promised.

Decisions to recordDefine the simulated failure and timing start condition.List the public checks required before declaring recovery complete.Record each dependency and interruption during the rehearsal.

Evidence, open questions and decisionsNext action and responsible role

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