The primary goals of all tests and exercises are to validate and improve an organization’s business continuity plans and strategies. Virtual Corporation experts work with our client hosts to define clear objectives and establish an appropriate scope prior to starting any test, drill, tabletop or full-scale exercise. We assist organizations in testing their various recovery components; delivering detailed findings reports which include recommendations for specific actions to be taken to improve response during an event.

Tests and exercises afford critical staff the opportunity to work together in a realistic environment in advance of an actual event. This provides practice to deal with multiple simultaneous disruptions and the ability to identify opportunities for improvement in an organization’s incident response process.

Objectives
Virtual Corporation consultants facilitate the development and delivery of tests and exercises to meet targeted goals and objectives. As example:

• Test the effectiveness of the communication aspects between the command management team and each group within a pandemic event
• Review critical processes as they are interconnected to each other to assure consistency of response
• Cover some specific major IT aspects of response to escalating levels of pandemic outbreak 
• Stretch and challenge the group but avoid chaos
• Construct the tabletop in such a way to maintain the interest of the group throughout the exercise
• Introduce some people that would have never participated in a tabletop of any kind to the process and benefits of a tabletop exercise
• Utilize this tabletop in preparation for another exercise with the senior leaders from across the entire company

Scope
The scope of these engagements often consist of the following:

Work with the client BC Team to define the exercise scope as it relates to their specific business requirements.

• Hazard
• Personnel
• Geographical Area
• Time
• Scale of the Exercise

Work with the client BC Team as they prepare the exercise toolkit:

• Developing the narrative – a descriptive document that provides participants with the exercise scenario and “sets the stage” for the exercise
• Develop major detailed events and expected actions
• Develop the exercise messages – the information derived from the major detailed events and expected actions “injected” into the exercise to drive it forward
• Develop the master scenario events list (MSEL) – the exercise control document detailing the sequence of messages and events
• Develop exercise control/logistics – those items that actually define the playing field for the simulation. While they will have an impact on the execution of the plan being exercised, they are not part of the plan itself.

Work with the client BC Team to identify and prepare team members for all of the exercise roles as defined below: Many of these roles can be staffed by Virtual or the client.

• Exercise Director (Virtual)
• Participants (client)
• Facilitators (Virtual or client)
• Simulators (Virtual or client)
• Observers (Virtual or client)
• Evaluators (Virtual or client)