Thoughts on Disaster Planning

With the recent tragedies in Haiti, there will be a number of articles in the technology press about disaster planning and recovery. Over the next year there will be a lot of activity as businesses jump start third DR planning. And, unfortunately, many of these plans and programs will be put aside a year from now and, once again, American businesses will not have a recovery option.

This posting is not about developing a DR plan for organization. To develop a disaster plan, the business needs to commit both the time and the resources to the project. The business needs to commit more than just the IT team to the project because DR covers more than just IT. A good DR plan covers the entire organization, provides for business continuity.

Rather than going into a lengthy discussion of a DR plan, we're going to go through a list of items that should be in place today. Some items on the list should be self-explanatory while others are on the list based on my own experience.

Communications. Immediately after the disaster, management needs to assess the impact of the disaster or tragedy on the company. A key resource to any company is the workforce and after a tragedy there needs to be a plan or a process in place that facilitates inventory of that resource. Within the company, there should be a list, a telephone roster, which can be used to take inventory of your staff. An administrative staffer would start by calling key people on the list, department heads for example and they would in turn contact people underneath them keep track of who they were able to find and report this information back to the staffer who initiated the phone calls. These calls would also be used to pass on information to the workforce. Once management knows where everybody is they can get all of that the right people to reopen offices, relocate staff as needed or anything else that had to be gone.

Such a list needs to be distributed managers and maintained on a regular basis. It goes without saying that the list needs to be hard copy; chances are that when you need to access the list your computers will be down.

Documentation. Most of the documentation we work with on a daily basis is maintained on a computer, be it on the wiki, and intranet, or some other electronic means. In the event of an emergency situation, however, there are some items that you need to have a hard copy and in a safe place. My short list is as follows:

• Names and phone numbers of department heads
• Names and phone numbers of service and support organizations that I deal with regularly
• Names and phone numbers of corporate security staff
• Names and phone numbers of my primary vendors
• Because I have worked in IT for years, I would always include anup-to-date inventory of my data center. This includes the servers, network gear, telephony, storage, software licenses and any related hardware, software and reference material that I need to restore services.

Once again, in a disaster you might not have access to my computers so this data should either be on hard copy or on a CD.

The information that I've listed above needs to be kept current and available. My personal recommendation is that the data all be stored on the CD, copy to multiple CDs. Distribution as follows:

• One copy should be sent along with the off-site data storage
• One copy should be given to senior management, to be available to them should anything happen to the manager.
• One copy is stored at the manager’s house a small fireproof box.
• One copy is stored the home of the next senior person on the staff.

Finally, there is usually a list of key passwords and accounts (sys admin and other key administrative accounts) should be written down and given to a senior executive or legal counsel and stored in a safe place. Once again, this information could be needed to recover or re-create services and systems. Putting the data in the hands of the executive or the legal counsel, in the event that the manager was not able to participate in recovery, provides the organization with the information it needs to move forward.

I'm sure that there are those who would say there is no need to go through the steps, that redundant systems and well-designed infrastructure should withstand most disasters. Unfortunately, the tragedy of Katrina, Haiti and the World Trade Center have demonstrated the need for such preparation. It isn't enough for a manager to keep his department running on a day-to-day basis; the manager needs to look to the future and plan for uncertainty.

Meetings - Success comes from preparation

Meetings – Preparation makes the meeting

I’m a project manager, working in an Internet related business. Much of my day is spent working with clients and internal support teams as projects are brought together. To put it more simply, I host a lot of meetings.

Now, I’ve been sitting through business meetings for a long time and I’ve experienced good ones and bad ones. Both the good and bad ones have a common trait. The best meetings are a result of great preparation while the bad meetings have little or no preparation.

The agenda should be treated as a script for the meeting; the host needs to ensure that the subject matter is covered and that any follow up tasks are clearly defined. In preparing the agenda, the host needs to let the invited participants know what the meeting is to cover; what roles and responsibilities are defined and/or delegated and what follow up is to be taken. The preparations also need to address the time allotted for the meeting; is there sufficient time for all the items on the agenda?

In the last week I had the good fortune to be invited to a really good meeting as well as one that needed more preparation.

A client had asked to come in to the office and discuss the engagement. The request had come in the form of an e-mail sent to the appropriate members of the account team. In his note he covered, in 3 sentences, the subject of the meeting, time table and the potential outcomes that were to be discussed.

At the meeting he presented his situation, covered the time table and added some additional information that helped support his proposed solution. In less than 20 minutes, all the required conversation was completed and we were working on the solution.

I’m very impressed with the way the host prepared for the meeting. All the participants knew what was to be discussed before hand and were able to respond to his proposals right away. When the proposal was reviewed, all participants went back to their desks knowing what needed to be done and when the customer anticipated final resolution.

Later in the week I was participating in one of those monthly staff meetings that business seems to thrive upon. The host didn’t provide an agenda so we went into the meeting without any clue to the topics that were to be covered. To add to the uncertainty, the invite was for 90 minutes.

The meeting ran just under a half hour; we were shown an overview of the subject matter. There was nothing made available that we could take away from the presentation and review.
In my view, the meeting was not a good one at all. The participants took 90 minutes out of their day and were not prepared for the material presented. No clear statement nor detailed procedure or plan presented that would cover the tasks involved. No doubt there would be additional meetings to cover these details.

Getting back to the preparation component of the meeting, we should do a better job when pulling people in for a meeting; spending the time to get the material assembled and presented before hand leads to a successful outcome.

Just my view.