As BCM Practitioners we are often required to dream up, plan, implement and facilitate a mock disaster exercise for our Crisis Management teams. The planning process is crucial to developing an exercise that meets the needs of your organization. Â Steps in planning a successful mock disaster exercise are:
- Consider the past list of scenarios you have presented to the team in the past.  Does a past exercise suffice or do we need to develop a brand new exercise?  A past exercise can be used if  significant gaps were exposed that require you to replay it to validate the teams response.  Always consider the maturity of the team.
- Review action items from previous exercises to make sure they have been resolved and do not cause gaps in the upcoming exercise.
- Identify the key objectives of the exercise; what are you trying to stress test and validate? Â Focus on a core set of objectives that you would like the exercise to meet. Â Less is more here.
- Based on the objectives, identify Subject Matter Experts who will aid you in building  the exercise.  These individuals can be internal and/or external personnel who will provide you with expertise to build your scenario.  These people typically do not participate in the exercise since they built it.
- Hold multiple brainstorming sessions with your Subject Matter Experts to build the exercise based on objectives you are trying to meet. Â Typically, a couple of these sessions will build the framework that you can use to create the detail events. Â Validate the exercise framework meets objectives.
- Build the detailed timeline and list of events to occur based on the framework you developed with the Subject Matter Experts. Â Consider how long you have for the exercise, Â give people time to address events and respond as needed. Â I consider the maturity of the team in determining how long I give them to address and respond to events in the exercise.
- Validate the scenario, timeline and events with your Subject Matter Experts; ensure it makes sense and meets the objectives. Â Identify gaps or areas that are confusing; you don’t want participants pointing at holes in your exercise that will derail it.
- Revise the scenario and you are ready.
- Make sure you have a good facilitator ready to lead the exercise. Â This person must be prepared to lead the team from the beginning to the end of the exercise. Â He or she must know the exercise in and out as well as assess how the team is doing. Â If the exercise needs to be slowed down or sped up, the facilitator must address it.
- Have fun and enjoy the exercise. Â It will never go as perfectly scripted but when does a disaster fit our plans?