What are the advantages and disadvantages of disaster management?

Answer 1

In the context of project management it all comes down to risk management - what might happen, what are the chances of it happening, if it happens, what is the result, if it does happen, what can we do about it and how do we stay on top of it. Look at what is highly likely and has the biggest impact on the business/project first and then work down the list until an acceptable level is reached. You can't possibly mitigate everything.

You could look at the following link to get more details and links to other areas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disaster_recovery_plan

Some of the advantages of disaster management:

• You can start by developing a disaster recovery / business continuity plan - this will help identify areas of concern. You could engagement with a large community to help you - arrange brainstorming events, interviews, workshops, prepare checklists, questionnaires, get expert facilitation, use data from previous projects, review assumption lists etc. The act of doing this will help you assess each event on a probability scale (1 being highly unlikely to 5 being highly likely).
• Effort can be concentrated on the top 10 events/issue, or the events which have the more importance to the project, the greatest size/value, the most complex or those with a stability/novelty or unknown element.
• Contingency or fallback plans can be developed for the top 10 events or to cover the majority of events.
• Having a plan can help influence the future procurement of new capabilities and services, and even help to dictate where they should be located in order to improve the disaster management in future.
• Issues/events can have owners responsible for ensuring processes are implemented, people are trained, and regular update reports on progress are provided to senior management.
• Future budgets can be set for future improvements.
• It improves corporate knowledge and experience and can prompt people to think laterally and look for alternative solutions, if reviewed regularly.
• Doing something is always better than doing nothing.

Some of the disadvantages of disaster management:

• It can cost a lot of money to develop and implement.
• It can take a lot of effort to do it properly, away from the projects themselves.
• It is not worth doing if it is not done properly.
• It can money to keep it current and update the systems periodically.

Disaster Management is a bit like an Insurance Policy, if you never need it, you wonder why you bought it. But, if you ever do need it, you are ever so glad you did.