Solution design
The goal of the solution design phase is to identify the most cost effective disaster recovery solution that meets two main requirements from the impact analysis stage.
For IT applications, this is commonly expressed as:
- The minimum application and application data requirements
- The time frame in which the minimum application and application data must be available
Disaster recovery plans may also be required outside the IT applications domain, for example in preservation of information in hard copy format, loss of skill staff management, or restoration of embedded technology in process plant. This BCP phase overlaps with Disaster recovery planning methodology. The solution phase determines:
- the crisis management command structure
- the location of a secondary work site (where necessary)
- telecommunication architecture between primary and secondary work sites
- data replication methodology between primary and secondary work sites
- the application and software required at the secondary work site, and
- the type of physical data requirements at the secondary work site.
Implementation
The implementation phase, quite simply, is the execution of the design elements identified in the solution design phase. Work package testing may take place during the implementation of the solution, however; work package testing does not take the place of organizational testing.
Testing and organizational acceptance
The purpose of testing is to achieve organizational acceptance that the business continuity solution satisfies the organization’s recovery requirements. Plans may fail to meet expectations due to insufficient or inaccurate recovery requirements, solution design flaws, or solution implementation errors. Testing may include:
- Crisis command team call-out testing
- Technical swing test from primary to secondary work locations
- Technical swing test from secondary to primary work locations
- Application test
- Business process test
At minimum, testing is generally conducted on a biannual or annual schedule. Problems identified in the initial testing phase may be rolled up into the maintenance phase and retested during the next test cycle.
