Tabletop Drills That Expose Hidden Fragility
Every organization believes its systems are resilient until a critical failure exposes the gaps no one anticipated. This article presents eight practical tabletop exercises that reveal overlooked dependencies and single points of failure before they become disasters. Drawing on insights from infrastructure and continuity experts, these drills provide actionable scenarios to test redundancy claims and strengthen operational resilience.
Document Clearance and Cross-Train Staff
We once ran a tabletop exercise around a port system slowdown combined with the absence of a senior documentation executive. The exercise revealed that clearance for certain recurring clients depended heavily on one person's experience rather than a shared process.
To fix this, we documented the full clearance workflow, created a shared tracker accessible to operations and documentation teams, and trained a backup resource for each active client. We now run a quarterly check where another team member handles a shipment end to end under supervision. This reduced dependency risk and improved response time during real disruptions.
Install Second API and Prove Cutover
We found out Magic Hour's video rendering depended entirely on one API. A brief outage once brought our whole workflow to a halt and delayed client projects. So we added a second cloud provider and wrote an automated failover script. Now every quarter I have the team simulate an API failure just to confirm our backup systems and communication plan actually work.
Set Dual ISPs and Pull Plug
We ran a test where we pretended the internet went down. It was a mess. Turns out, relying on one provider was a huge mistake. Now our clients have two separate internet lines, and every quarter we literally unplug one to make sure the other takes over. It's simple, but those surprise outage calls have basically stopped. Don't just assume your backup works, actually test it.
Diversify Storage Vendors and Rehearse Switchover
We ran a simulation once and found a massive single point of failure. All our backup scripts pointed to one outdated storage provider. We quickly switched to using multiple providers, which cut our risk significantly and sped up restore times. Now we run failover drills every quarter. You have to keep rerunning those recovery tests to spot dependencies that creep in over time. They sneak up on you.
Create Parallel Ledger and Verify Totals
During a drill at CashbackHQ, we realized a huge risk. All our affiliate earnings data came from one company. When that company went down, we couldn't see our own earnings for a day. I immediately added a backup system and now it saves our data automatically every few hours. Each quarter I double-check both systems to make sure the numbers match, so we're never flying blind again.
Share Project Access and Coach Supervisors
Here's the thing. Everything had to go through one construction manager. If he wasn't available, we had nothing to do. I built a shared dashboard and showed the other supervisors how to find the files themselves. It saved us when the manager was actually out. Now we check our backup system every quarter so we never get stuck like that again.
Add Offsite Copies and Confirm Restores
A Techcare drill revealed a big problem. All our backups ran through one machine in the office. If that location went down, we would have no data at all. My work in IT ops taught me you need cloud backups and regular recovery tests. Now we run quarterly failure simulations to confirm our local and offsite copies can each be restored independently.
Deploy Mirror License Server and Swap
We ran a drill and found our license server had no backup. If it went down, every customer would be locked out of our main feature immediately. So we set up a second server in another location. Now we switch between them every quarter, just to make sure it works and catch any issues before our clients do.
