Details & Programme

An organisation’s capacity to attend half day exercises is limited and so often exercises only take place once a year. Short exercises are an ideal way to keep up incident management skills, are manageable timewise as everyone can spare an hour, and they can often be as effective as longer exercises. Short exercises, which all take less than an hour to run, can be used in a number of different ways, including to:

• Keep in mind incident management skills in between longer exercises
• Exercise particular scenarios which would not be considered during a longer exercise
• Teach specific incident skills
• Concentrate on a particular part of the incident response, such as the first hour
• Help raise awareness among staff
• Learn and then practise debriefing skills

The course is centered around Charlie Maclean-Bristol’s book, “Business Continuity Exercises: Quick Exercises to Validate Your Plan”. The course will teach delegates the breadth of different exercises within the book, and how to plan, execute and then report on the exercises. The training will cover business continuity, crisis management, crisis communications and cyber incident management scenarios. It will be fully interactive and delegates will practise running different exercises.

The course would be especially beneficial for those with little or no experience in running exercises and will provide them with the tools, processes and confidence to run their own exercises.

Module 1: Understanding Short Exercises

• Initial exercise
• What circumstances are short exercises good for?
• The different types of exercises and debriefs
• What is your exercise trying to achieve?
• Writing exercise objectives
• End to end planning process, including writing post exercise reports

Module 2: Prepare and Practice Simple Exercises

• Delegates split up into groups
• Each group will plan a different exercise
• Each group will brief and then run their exercise
• Techniques for simple debriefing

Module 3: Prepare and Practice More Complex Short Exercises

• Introduction to a number of different complex exercises
• Each group will plan a different exercise
• Each group will brief and then run their exercise
• Discussion on reporting on exercises

Module 4: Running Debriefing and Writing Up Post Exercise Reports

• Different debriefing techniques outlined in the book
• Planning and running different debriefing sessions
• Debriefing practical
• Writing post exercise reports

Day 1

Start	Finish	Subject	Detail
0900	0930	Introduction
0930	1100	Module 1: Understanding Short Exercises	- Initial exercise - What circumstances are short exercises good for? - The different types of exercises and debriefs - What is your exercise trying to achieve? - Writing exercise objectives - End to end planning process, including writing post exercise reports
1100	1115	Break
1115	1300	Module 2: Prepare and Practice Simple Exercises	- Delegates split up into groups - Each group will plan a different exercise - Each group will brief and then run their exercise - Techniques for simple debriefing
1300	1400	Lunch
1400	1500	Module 3: Prepare and Practice More Complex Short Exercises	- Introduction to a number of different complex exercises - Each group will plan a different exercise - Each group will brief and then run their exercise - Discussion on reporting on exercises
1500	1515	Break
1515	1645	Module 4: Running Debriefing and Writing Up Post Exercise Reports	- Different debriefing techniques outlined in the book - Planning and running different debriefing sessions - Debriefing practical - Writing post exercise reports
1645	1700	Course Review

Please note, timings are indicative and exact timings may vary due to delegate experience and their interest in certain topics. The course may finish earlier if all topics have been covered.

Download a PDF of the course details >