Many companies do some data recovery exercises; however, few take the time to craft a “real life” scenario and test their processes.   What I mean by this is they restore some files to say they could restore and review them.  These are done by resources that know the process well. Generally, they try to tie this into another event, like restoring production data to do a test system refresh or restoring some sample files on a file system for a user. 

These companies will be less prepared for a true event where they need to test the process without their key resources or in less-than-ideal conditions. This is when you typically see people who are unsure of the steps that they need to take to proceed with a data restore or who, due to the lack of infrastructure at a particular location, can’t perform the task in the way that they expected. 

I recommend that organizations take the time to craft a specific scenario and discuss it with the team in advance. Provide the team with time to prepare for the exercise. They should know what they need to do, but not when they will need to perform the task. Coordinate internally with key business leaders on the testing date. 

At the time of the test, provide a list of people from IT and the Business that have been impacted by the scenario and would not be available to participate in the recovery scenario.  Then allow the team to proceed to do the recovery and have the impacted people record the needed improvements (but not participate or help in the recovery).     This type of exercise, even on a smaller scale, will provide the organization with insights into where they have process weaknesses or other areas of improvement, they might need to make should they have an actual scenario.