What to change
Agree what the recovery measurement includes. The practice's useful question is how long the defined service remains unavailable, not just how quickly a file command runs. Mark the starting condition, required permissions, restoration steps and acceptance checks before the drill. Record pauses and unresolved dependencies honestly. A fictional rehearsal can expose the measurement boundaries without creating a real outage or encouraging staff to rush past checks to achieve an attractive number.
A worked example
Illustrative example
Illustrative test: The drill ends only after the agreed deep-route and asset checks pass. A drill may copy files quickly but spend longer obtaining access and validating deeper pages. Recording the full agreed start and finish makes those dependencies visible. Your team marks pauses honestly and ends timing only after the defined public checks pass. The result supports a realistic discussion of recovery readiness, rather than a narrow command duration that excludes the very work likely to delay service restoration during an incident.
What this means for your practice
A claim that a restore took minutes may count only file copying, excluding the time needed to gain access and check the public site. Agree the measurement boundaries before rehearsing. Define the simulated failure, necessary permissions and public tasks that must work before recovery is declared complete. Record pauses and unresolved dependencies honestly. A fictional drill can reveal those gaps without creating a real outage. The practice's useful question is how long the defined service is unavailable under the agreed conditions, not how quickly one command runs. Clear boundaries make the result comparable and discourage rushing past the checks merely to produce an attractive duration.
How to check the result
The measured duration has clear boundaries and reproducible acceptance evidence.
A mistake to avoid
Excluding difficult preparation steps can make a recovery estimate misleading.
Turn reading into a next step
Your action checklist
Work through these checks with your team or supplier. Tick the ones you have resolved and leave unknowns open.
Record what you know, what is still missing and the answer you need from your team or supplier.
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Further reading
These sources provide background for the topic. The practice examples and checklist are illustrative planning suggestions from Kay & Co.
Related guides
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