What is a right-sized disaster recovery plan?

Close the gap between your DR capabilities and service continuity requirements.

Unlock This Blueprint

Blueprint Contents:

1. Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) Research – A step-by-step document that helps streamline your DR planning process and build a plan that's concise, usable, and maintainable.

Any time a major IT outage occurs, it increases executive awareness and internal pressure to create an IT DRP. This blueprint will help you develop an actionable DRP by following our four-phase methodology to define scope, current status, and dependencies; conduct a business impact analysis; identify and address gaps in the recovery workflow; and complete, extend, and maintain your DRP.

  • Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan – Phases 1-4

2. DRP Case Studies – Examples to help you understand the governance and incident response components of a DRP and to show that your DRP project does not need to be as onerous as imagined.

These examples include a client who leveraged the DRP blueprint to create practical, concise, and easy-to-maintain DRP governance and incident response plans and a case study based on a hospital providing a wide range of healthcare services.

  • Case Study: Practical, Right-Sized DRP

3. DRP Maturity Scorecard – An assessment tool to evaluate the current state of your DRP.

Use this tool to measure your current DRP maturity and identify gaps to address. It includes a comprehensive list of requirements for your DRP program, including core and industry requirements.

  • DRP Maturity Scorecard

4. DRP Project Charter Template – A template to communicate important details on the project purpose, scope, and parameters.

The project charter template includes details on the project overview (description, background, drivers, and objectives); governance and management (project stakeholders/roles, budget, and dependencies); and risks, assumptions, and constraints (known and potential risks and mitigation strategy).

  • DRP Project Charter Template

5. DRP Business Impact Analysis Tool – An evaluation tool to estimate the impact of downtime to determine appropriate, acceptable recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) and to review gaps between objectives and actuals.

This tool enables you to identify critical applications/systems; identify dependencies; define objective scoring criteria to evaluate the impact of application/system downtime; determine the impact of downtime and establish criticality tiers; set recovery objectives (RTO/RPO) based on the impact of downtime; record recovery actuals (RTA/RPA) and identify any gaps between objectives and actuals; and identify dependencies that regularly fail (and have a significant impact when they fail) to prioritize efforts to improve resiliency.

  • DRP Business Impact Analysis Tool (.xlsx)
  • DRP Business Impact Analysis Tool (.xlsx)

6. DRP BIA Scoring Context Example – A tool to record assumptions you made in the DRP Business Impact Analysis Tool to explain the results and drive business engagement and feedback.

Use this tool to specifically record assumptions made about who and what are impacted by system downtime and record assumptions made about impact severity.

  • DRP BIA Scoring Context Example

7. DRP Recovery Workflow Template – A flowchart template to provide an at-a-glance view of the recovery workflow.

This simple format is ideal during crisis situations, easier to maintain, and often quicker to create. Use this template to document the Notify - Assess - Declare disaster workflow, document current and planned future state recovery workflows, including gaps and risks, and review an example recovery workflow.

  • DRP Recovery Workflow Template (.pdf)
  • DRP Recovery Workflow Template (.vsd)

8. DRP Roadmap Tool – A visual roadmapping tool that will help you plan, communicate, and track progress for your DRP initiatives.

Improving DR capabilities is a marathon, not a sprint. You likely can't fund and resource all the measures for risk mitigation at once. Instead, use this tool to create a roadmap for actions, tasks, projects, and initiatives to complete in the short, medium, and long term. Prioritize high-benefit, low-cost mitigations.

  • DRP Roadmap Tool

9. DRP Recap and Results Template – A template to summarize and present key findings from your DR planning exercises and documents.

Use this template to present your results from the DRP Maturity Scorecard, BCP-DRP Fitness Assessment, DRP Business Impact Analysis Tool, tabletop planning exercises, DRP Recovery Workflow Template, and DRP Roadmap Tool.

  • DRP Recap and Results Template

10. DRP Workbook – A comprehensive tool that enables you to organize information to support DR planning.

Leverage this tool to document information regarding DRP resources (list the documents/information sources that support DR planning and where they are located) and DR teams and contacts (list the DR teams, SMEs critical to DR, and key contacts, including business continuity management team leads that would be involved in declaring a disaster and coordinating response at an organizational level).

  • DRP Workbook

11. Appendix

The following tools and templates are also included as part of this blueprint to use as needed to supplement the core steps above:

  • DRP Incident Response Management Tool
  • DRP Vendor Evaluation Questionnaire
  • DRP Vendor Evaluation Tool
  • Severity Definitions and Escalation Rules Template
  • BCP-DRP Fitness Assessment
Unlock This Blueprint

Your Challenge

  • What is a right-sized disaster recovery plan? It's a concise and effective plan to support IT service continuity.
  • Any time a natural disaster or major IT outage occurs, it increases executive awareness and internal pressure to create a disaster recovery plan (DRP), a specific set of requirements that allow an organization to remain effective in the event of an outage, tailored to an organization’s specific needs.
  • Traditional DRP templates are onerous and result in a lengthy, dense plan that might satisfy auditors but will not be effective in a crisis.
  • The myth that a DRP is only for major disasters leaves organizations vulnerable to more common incidents.
  • The growing use of outsourced infrastructure services has increased reliance on vendors to meet recovery timeline objectives.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

  • At its core, disaster recovery (DR) is about ensuring service continuity. Create a plan that can be leveraged for both isolated and catastrophic events.
  • Remember Murphy’s Law. Failure happens. Focus on improving overall resiliency and recovery, rather than basing DR on risk probability analysis.
  • Cost-effective DR and service continuity starts with identifying what is truly mission critical so you can focus resources accordingly. Not all services require fast failover.

Impact and Result

  • Define appropriate objectives for service downtime and data loss based on business impact.
  • Document an incident response plan that captures all of the steps from event detection to data center recovery.
  • Create a DR roadmap to close gaps between current DR capabilities and recovery objectives.
Unlock This Blueprint

Member Testimonials

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.

9.6/10


Overall Impact

$66,831


Average $ Saved

28


Average Days Saved

Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

Texas Trust Credit Union

Guided Implementation

10/10

$32,195

20

I really appreciate Scott’s experience and expertise on this subject. He made it clear and easy to understand.

City of Palm Beach Gardens

Workshop

10/10

$34,250

20

Time consuming for a large portion of staff however will pay off with saving time for all employees in the event of a disaster.

National Arts Centre Canada

Guided Implementation

10/10

$50,000

20

Working with Frank was wonderful, he was knowledgeable, patient and really took his time to walk us through the fundamentals without judgement. It ... Read More

State of New Mexico Early Childhood & Care Department

Guided Implementation

9/10

$13,700

20

Organization of materials that can be tailored to organization size and maturity and can be approached iteratively. Great callouts differentiating... Read More

County of Stafford

Workshop

10/10

$137K

90

Our workshop facilitator, Venkat, was extremely knowledgeable! He added significant value to our discussions and provided us with great recommendat... Read More

Eastern Michigan University

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

N/A

Our consultant was wonderful. He was very knowledgeable.

Stream Realty Partners, L.P.

Guided Implementation

9/10

$34,250

10

Lower Hudson Regional Information Center

Workshop

10/10

N/A

20

Venkat proved to be an exceptional consultant for our team. He came well-prepared and rapidly grasped the subtleties of our organization, adapting ... Read More

Solano County, CA

Workshop

10/10

$68,500

20

The workshop was fantastic. It empowered us to establish a robust BIA process that our organization was lacking. I now have the tools to develop a ... Read More

Department of Agriculture Kentucky

Guided Implementation

8/10

N/A

2

The risk assessment techniques were useful in gauging the impact of various scenarios, and the official engagement provided persuasion for other te... Read More

Conseil Scolaire Catholique MonAvenir

Guided Implementation

9/10

$25,000

38

The experience was excellent overall. Darin was very knowledgable and really did a great job of guiding us through the process. We really enjoyed t... Read More

Engie North America INC

Workshop

10/10

$137K

20

Joe Riley was an excellent resource with vast experience and expertise to guide Engie thru the process of identifying Gaps and documenting existing... Read More

Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

100

It was great working with Scott Houle. He is knowledgeable and patient and made sure that I had all the information necessary to tackle something a... Read More

Firstmac Limited

Guided Implementation

10/10

$1,820

2

Support in classification and risk ranking of our BCP Risks.

Monroe #1 BOCES

Workshop

7/10

N/A

N/A

Facilitator was outstanding and flexible to our needs. As our work was focused on developing a roadmap for a DRP replacement, estimating time and ... Read More

Carver County, MN

Guided Implementation

9/10

$13,712

7

Socan

Workshop

10/10

$100K

10

We found the domain knowledge of the facilitator to be very good which helped us to ask and answer the right questions based on our environment and... Read More

Coachella Valley Water District

Workshop

10/10

$68,500

20

There are no issues or concerns to report. Sumit has proven to be an exceptional consultant, demonstrating a deep familiarity with the specific typ... Read More

First Ontario Credit Union Ltd.

Guided Implementation

10/10

$50,000

20

Darin's wealth of knowledge in the space has been fantastic. It has allowed us to bring in the correct stake holders to understand the needs of the... Read More

Woodbine Entertainment Group

Workshop

8/10

$10,000

20

Very difficult to meet ITRG's back-to-back scheduling requirement for these sessions. Excellent discussions facilitated by Venkat across lines o... Read More

State of Kentucky - Kentucky Transportation Cabinet

Workshop

10/10

$68,500

50

Venkat was a great facilitator and had clearly planned the days well and did preliminary work each night so we would have a very valuable day of wo... Read More

Small Enterprise Finance Agency

Guided Implementation

9/10

$13,700

20

Templates and advise was very useful

MyPath, Inc.

Guided Implementation

10/10

$137K

120

Frank brings excellent experience to the table in relation to our DR and BC Workshops and discussions. We are fortunate to have him facilitating fo... Read More

Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority

Guided Implementation

8/10

$5,000

5

Very knowledgeable help and good insights...

Georgia Department of Banking and Finance

Guided Implementation

10/10

$13,700

20

Kansas Public Employees Retirement System

Guided Implementation

10/10

$34,250

20

Best part is being able to ask questions on any parts that I don't understand. No worst part.

County of Montgomery

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

20

Andrew is an awesome analyst and advisor. He was able to keep us on track and explain everything in detail as we worked through the program. It was... Read More

Sirtex Medical US Holdings, Inc.

Guided Implementation

10/10

$129K

20

The value provided by Infotech is threefold. Firstly, there's the research; clear, comprehensive and ready to share, making me look like a rock sta... Read More

Santa Fe Community College

Guided Implementation

9/10

$1,039

23

St. Petersburg College

Guided Implementation

10/10

$123K

47

Frank was amazing to work with, collaborate on ideas and create a framework for success.

Get Instant Access to this Blueprint

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world's fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Guided Implementations

This guided implementation is a ten call advisory process.

Guided Implementation #1 - Define DRP scope
Call #1 - Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.
Call #2 - Identify applications/systems to focus on first.
Guided Implementation #2 - Define current status and system dependencies
Call #1 - Assess current DRP maturity.
Call #2 - Identify system dependencies.
Guided Implementation #3 - Conduct a BIA
Call #1 - Create an impact scoring scale and conduct a BIA.
Call #2 - Identify RTO and RPO for each system.
Guided Implementation #4 - Recovery workflow
Call #1 - Create a recovery workflow based on tabletop planning.
Call #2 - Identify gaps in recovery capabilities.
Guided Implementation #5 - Projects and action items
Call #1 - Identify and prioritize improvements.
Call #2 - Summarize results and plan next steps.