What is your ability to deliver support if the building loses power? Or if there is a small fire in the kitchen? Or if the roads nearby are closed and people can’t get to the office? None of these things are actually disasters, and all of them can happen for very ordinary reasons. The fact is these and many other situations may disrupt your ability to deliver support to customers. Do you have a plan?
By Jerry Stalick
Vice President at F5 Networks and Chair of the Member Advisory Board for the Association of Support Professionals
Taking the time to create a Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity Plan for support faces two challenges among Support professionals. First, it’s intimidating. Secondly, formal responsibility for DR or BC usually doesn’t belong to the Support organization.
The notion that DR or BC doesn’t belong to Support is a dangerous position to take. I’ve seen too many official corporate plans which focused on things like HR records or corporate financial data but gave no more than passing thought (at best) to how the company would continue to service customers during a disruption. But when something goes wrong, it’s left to the Support leadership to answer questions about how their organization responded.
Every support organization should be prepared for a disaster, even if the “disaster” is nothing more than a toaster fire.