Testing a continuity plan does not mean shutting the business down for a day. For most small businesses it means sitting five people around a table for forty-five minutes, reading out a scenario, and walking through who does what. Every plan we have seen tested for the first time had at least one gap in it.
How to run a desktop exercise
- Pick one scenario that is genuinely plausible for you, such as losing power for a day or the premises being inaccessible.
- Get the people who would actually be on shift into the room, not just the leadership team.
- Read the scenario out, then work forward in time: the first ten minutes, the first hour, the first day.
- At each step, ask who decides, who is called, and what customers are told.
- Write down every question nobody can answer. That list is the output.
What tests usually reveal
The same handful of gaps come up repeatedly: nobody knows where the spare keys are, the alarm code is held by one person, the insurance policy number is not written down anywhere, the after-hours number for the landlord is wrong, and there is no agreed wording for telling customers. None of those cost much to fix. All of them cost hours on the day.
"The point of a test is not to pass. It is to find the gaps while they are cheap."
How often to test
Twice a year is sensible for most small businesses, with one of those sittings before storm season rather than during it. If you have had a change of premises, systems or key staff, run one after the change rather than waiting for the calendar.
Worked example: a Cairns tour operator
A twelve-person operator ran a forty-minute exercise on a vessel being out of service during peak season. They found three gaps: no agreed refund position, no list of competitor operators who could take bookings, and no single person responsible for updating the booking platform. All three were fixed within a fortnight. Two months later a mechanical fault took a vessel out for six days and the business rebooked 80 per cent of affected customers rather than refunding them.
Common mistakes
- Only inviting managers, so the people who would actually be on shift never see the plan.
- Choosing a dramatic scenario nobody believes, which turns the session into theatre.
- Not writing the gaps down, so the same problems are rediscovered next time.
- Failing to assign each gap an owner and a date.
Do I need an external facilitator?
Not for a first pass. An owner reading a scenario aloud and asking honest questions gets most of the value. An external facilitator is worth it when you want the exercise pressure-tested, when the leadership team is too close to the detail, or when insurers or customers want evidence the test happened.
How long should a test take?
Forty-five minutes to an hour for a desktop walkthrough. Anything longer tends to lose the room, and the useful findings almost always surface in the first half.
Related reading: the business continuity plan template for Queensland, the emergency contact list every small business should have and our scenario test add-on.
Run the test against the playbooks in the app, then tick the fixes off as you go and export a PDF record.
See the app →