2014 Velocity Tutorial: The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operations Drills

Here are my tutorial slides from the Velocity Santa Clara Conference, June 24.  There were lots of great questions from the audience, and discussion continued… I have an Office Hour tomorrow as well, in case folks think of questions they didn’t ask today!

The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operations Drills

Emergency drills must be planned within a broad context of emergency response, emergency operations, business continuity planning/resiliency, disaster recovery, and information technology architecture. This tutorial will give that broader context, first providing some perspective on goals and personnel involved in the following:

  • Emergency response: “Respond”
  • Emergency operations: “Assess, Report, Recover”
  • Business continuity planning and resiliency: Business Impact Analysis, Threat and Risk Analysis, Recovery Point Objectives, and Recovery Time Objectives
  • Disaster recovery and information technology architecture

That will be followed by key concepts in emergency operations center and incident headquarters design, methods of introducing such concepts to attendee’s organizations, and a sequence of basic-to-advanced drill designs.

The emergency drill design portion begins with a typical life-safety drill, progresses through basic and advanced IT emergency operations drills, and concludes with guru-level additions to drill design. The more advanced drill designs will allow attendees to build upon and include the features and components of earlier basic drills without overburdening their teams with too many simulations.

Keeping a large group of intelligent IT folks engaged in a drill simulation can be very challenging. Attendees will leave this tutorial ready to design effective drills to better prepare their organizations for likely emergencies and realistic function failures.

Slides: The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operations Drills

 

Upcoming in June 2014: Tutorial and Office Hour, Velocity Santa Clara

If you’re interested in attending The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operations Drills in California, there are still a few seats available in my tutorial at the Velocity Santa Clara conference on June 24.

The Velocity Santa Clara conference has all kinds of other great presentations and tutorials, too, of course.

And I’ll also be hosting an office hour to follow up on the tutorial, and to welcome random IT emergency drills planning questions, on June 25.  I’m in fairly illustrious company, so if you’re attending Velocity in Santa Clara, check out the rest of the office hours lineup as well.

 

BBLISA Boston Area LOPSA April 2014 Meeting

On April 9 I spoke at MIT’s campus in Boston, at the Back Bay LISA Boston area local LOPSA Chapter Meeting, on the topic of The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operations Drills.

And yes, d10s were provided.

Slides: Adele Shakal BBLISA 2014 Gamemaster Talk

 

2014 CascadiaIT Tutorial: The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operation Drills

Seattle

I gave a tutorial in Seattle, at the CascadiaIT 2014 Conference, March 7-8.

Tutorial: The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operation Drills

Keeping IT folks engaged in a drill simulation can be very challenging. The skills necessary to design, execute and facilitate IT emergency drills are practical, perfectly suited to the hands-on, participatory environment of a technical tutorial.

Become a gamemaster worthy of designing and executing drills on likely emergency scenarios and realistic function failures for your organization.

Who should attend:  Technical IT staff, IT supervisors, managers, directors, business continuity/resiliency project managers and IT emergency planners – anyone who may be tasked with planning or facilitating an IT emergency drill for an IT department, business unit or organization. Prior experience in IT disaster recovery or any kind of emergency response will be helpful but is not required.

Take back to work: Practical experience identifying critical business functions, designing emergency operations centers and incident headquarters, and designing, executing and facilitating IT emergency drills.

Outline: Within a broad context of emergency response, emergency operations, business continuity planning/resiliency, disaster recovery and information technology architecture, this tutorial will provide participants with hands-on experience to design and execute IT emergency drills.

Participants will collaboratively identify critical business functions and continuity/resiliency objectives for two fictional example organizations, and catalog IT services involved in supporting those business functions. We will then design an appropriate emergency operations center incident headquarters for those organizations. Along the way, we will discuss and brainstorm methods of introducing such concepts to participants’ actual organizations.

During the latter part of this tutorial, participants will walk through a first a basic life-safety and IT emergency operations drill, and then an advanced IT emergency operations drill. We will also evaluate quantifiable success factors for each drill, collect lessons learned, and discuss guru-level additions to advanced drill design.

Slides: Adele Shakal CascadiaIT 2014 Gamemaster Tutorial

Crabby Admins Baltimore/DC LOPSA March 2014 Meeting

In March, I spoke remotely in Baltimore, at the CrabbyAdmins Local LOPSA Chapter Meeting, March 5: The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operations Drills.

And yes, d10s were provided.

Slides: Adele Shakal Crabby Admins 2014 Gamemaster Talk

 

New website for 2014, upcoming CascadiaIT conference and LOPSA local meetings

I’ve finally admitted to myself that I need a single place to archive online all of my conference presentations, workshops, tutorial materials and such.  So here I am.

And here you are!  Thanks for stopping by!

I have a few upcoming invited talks and a tutorial coming up…

Baltimore

I’ll be speaking remotely in Baltimore, at the CrabbyAdmins Local LOPSA Chapter Meeting, March 5: The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operations Drills.

Seattle

I’ll be giving a talk and a tutorial in Seattle, at the CascadiaIT 2014 Conference, March 7-8.

Invited Talk: Establishing IT Project Management Culture

Some IT organizations have well-established project management cultures; other organizations are on the frontier, either without a project management culture or experiencing rapid change. The application of appropriate IT project management principles in such organizations can be challenging, but you will benefit from the experiences of a frontier project-herder, covering basic techniques to allow IT teams to be more efficient and effective, and tips for establishing and fostering project management culture within rapidly changing and growing organizations.

Tutorial: The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operation Drills

Keeping IT folks engaged in a drill simulation can be very challenging. The skills necessary to design, execute and facilitate IT emergency drills are practical, perfectly suited to the hands-on, participatory environment of a technical tutorial.

Become a gamemaster worthy of designing and executing drills on likely emergency scenarios and realistic function failures for your organization.

Who should attend:  Technical IT staff, IT supervisors, managers, directors, business continuity/resiliency project managers and IT emergency planners – anyone who may be tasked with planning or facilitating an IT emergency drill for an IT department, business unit or organization. Prior experience in IT disaster recovery or any kind of emergency response will be helpful but is not required.

Take back to work: Practical experience identifying critical business functions, designing emergency operations centers and incident headquarters, and designing, executing and facilitating IT emergency drills.

Outline: Within a broad context of emergency response, emergency operations, business continuity planning/resiliency, disaster recovery and information technology architecture, this tutorial will provide participants with hands-on experience to design and execute IT emergency drills.

Participants will collaboratively identify critical business functions and continuity/resiliency objectives for two fictional example organizations, and catalog IT services involved in supporting those business functions. We will then design an appropriate emergency operations center incident headquarters for those organizations. Along the way, we will discuss and brainstorm methods of introducing such concepts to participants’ actual organizations.

During the latter part of this tutorial, participants will walk through a first a basic life-safety and IT emergency operations drill, and then an advanced IT emergency operations drill. We will also evaluate quantifiable success factors for each drill, collect lessons learned, and discuss guru-level additions to advanced drill design.

Boston

And I’ll be speaking in Boston, at the Back Bay Large Installation System Administration (BBLISA) Local LOPSA Chapter Meeting, April 9: The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operations Drills.

Other Places?

If you would like for me to speak at your conference or meeting, about IT emergency planning and drill design, project management, advancing women in computing … please let me know (especially if your organization has a real Code of Conduct/Anti-Harassment Policy #CoCPledge — I value and support your efforts to include more diversity in IT).  I’m starting to polish up some additional content around cloud computing concepts as well.

LISA 2013 Invited Talk: Becoming a Gamemaster: Designing IT Emergency Operations and Drills

I presented an invited talk at USENIX LISA 2013 in Washington, DC: Becoming a Gamemaster: Designing IT Emergency Operations and Drills

Bring emergency response and operations, business continuity, disaster recovery, and IT architecture together into practical drill design… and prepare your organization for whatever zombie apocalypse it may face.

Learn key concepts in emergency operations center and incident headquarters design, methods of introducing such concepts to your organization, and a sequence of basic-to-advanced drill designs.

Keeping IT folks engaged in a drill simulation can be very challenging. Become a gamemaster worthy of designing and executing drills on likely emergency scenarios and realistic function failures for your organization.

Hard-hats and D10s not included.

(I did actually bring d10s.)

The slides, audio and video of this invited talk are available via the USENIX LISA 2013 website.

Slides: Adele Shakal USENIX LISA 2013 Gamemaster Talk

LISA 2013 Workshop: The Practical Gamemaster: Hands-On Design and Execution of IT Emergency Operations Drills

I led a workshop at USENIX LISA 2013 in Washington, DC: The Practical Gamemaster: Hands-On Design and Execution of IT Emergency Operations Drills

Within a broad context of emergency response, emergency operations, business continuity planning/resiliency, disaster recovery, and information technology architecture, this workshop will provide participants with hands-on experience to design and execute IT emergency drills.

Participants will collaboratively identify critical business functions and continuity/resiliency objectives for a fictional organization, and catalog IT services involved in supporting those business functions. We will then design an emergency operations center or incident headquarters for that fictional organization. Along the way, we will discuss and brainstorm methods of introducing such concepts to participants’ actual organizations.

During the latter part of this workshop, participants will split into groups to accomplish first a basic life-safety and IT emergency operations drill, and then an advanced IT emergency operations drill. As workshop participants execute each of these drill plans, we will evaluate quantifiable success factors of each drill, collect lessons learned, and discuss guru-level additions to advanced drill design.

Keeping IT folks engaged in a drill simulation can be very challenging. The skills necessary to design, execute, and facilitate IT emergency drills are practical, perfectly suited to the hands-on, participatory environment of a technical workshop.

Become a gamemaster worthy of designing and executing drills on likely emergency scenarios and realistic function failures for your organization. You are hereby summoned to actively (with good humor) learn to engage your team in emergency operations planning and drill facilitation! Hard hats and D10’s included.

(I did not actually bring hard hats to this workshop; they would not fit into my suitcase.)

Slides: Adele Shakal USENIX LISA 2013 Gamemaster Workshop