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ITDR Scenario Exercise
Your next outage will test more than your IT team.
An ITDR Scenario Exercise validates your organisation's ability to respond to a major IT disruption — not just technically, but operationally. Fixinc designs realistic exercises that test how your leadership, business teams, and IT work together when critical systems go down.
When systems go down, the whole organisation is tested.
IT disruptions are now the most common trigger for business-wide incidents. When critical systems go offline, the impact extends far beyond the IT department. Operations stall, customers are affected, revenue stops, and leadership needs to make rapid decisions about priorities, communications, and workarounds. Yet most IT disaster recovery testing focuses entirely on the technical side — backups, failovers, and system restores — without ever testing how the wider organisation responds.
Fixinc designs ITDR exercises that focus on the organisational response to an IT disruption. We involve senior IT members to ensure the scenario reflects your real infrastructure and recovery capabilities, but the exercise is built for the people who need to keep the business running while systems are being restored: leadership, operational teams, business continuity coordinators, and communications leads.
The exercise is delivered in two parts. The morning session is a facilitated walkthrough where participants work through the scenario step by step, reinforcing their understanding of the IT Disaster Recovery Plan, recovery priorities drawn from your Business Impact Analysis, and the roles and decision-making tools available to them. The afternoon session is immersive. Teams respond to an evolving IT disruption with minimal guidance, facing dynamic injects that test impact assessment, recovery prioritisation, cross-functional coordination, and communication under pressure.
IT disaster recovery is an area where genuine expertise is rare. Many organisations have never tested how their business operates during an extended outage, relying instead on assumptions about what IT will have restored and by when. These exercises close that gap. A post-exercise report captures findings, observations, and recommendations, giving you a clear benchmark of how prepared your organisation truly is when the systems go down.
Respond with confidence
When things go wrong, this phase activates. The Diamond’s top layers focus on structured, coordinated response, from executive decisions down to team-level action. Here’s where tools like F24, defined roles, and real-time communications bring planning to life under pressure.
A stronger return to BAU
The end goal isn’t just recovery, it’s learning. After every disruption, this phase ensures lessons are captured, plans are updated, and culture is strengthened. It’s about returning to operations quickly, but better prepared for next time.
Planning made practical
This phase includes disciplines like business continuity, crisis management, and IT disaster recovery. It’s where the bulk of the work happens, through structured validation, simulations, and repeatable testing. For those looking to lead in their sector, it can also align with ISO accreditation and industry standards.
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Is this exercise just for the IT team?
No. While senior IT members participate to provide technical context, the exercise is designed for the wider organisation — leadership, operational teams, and business continuity coordinators. The focus is on how the business responds and operates during an IT disruption, not on the technical recovery itself.
What type of IT disruption will the scenario cover?
The scenario is tailored to your organisation and IT environment. It could involve a major system outage, cyber incident, data centre failure, cloud service disruption, or other IT-related events. Fixinc works with your IT team to ensure the scenario is realistic and relevant.
How does this differ from technical disaster recovery testing?
Technical DR testing validates that systems can be restored — backups work, failovers activate, and recovery time objectives are met. An ITDR scenario exercise validates that the organisation knows what to do while that recovery is happening: who makes decisions, how priorities are set, how teams communicate, and how operations continue.
Do we need a completed ITDR Plan before running this exercise?
Ideally, yes. The exercise validates the plan and your team's ability to use it. However, Fixinc can run an exercise against existing procedures or draft plans to benchmark your current capability and inform where plan development efforts should focus.
Can this exercise be integrated with other response plans?
Yes. IT disruptions often trigger business continuity, incident management, and crisis management responses simultaneously. The exercise can be scoped to test the ITDR Plan in isolation or integrated with other plans to test how they work together during a major IT event.