Continuity guide

Designing a useful tabletop exercise

A good tabletop exercise has a small number of learning objectives and enough uncertainty to make participants make decisions.

TabletopExercise

Editorial review: August 11, 2026 · Adrian M. Westbridge

Objective first

Choose what you want to learn: escalation, customer communication, supplier dependency, remote work or recovery sequencing.

Scenario second

The scenario only needs enough detail to create the decisions required by the objectives.

Injects

New information can be introduced gradually to test handoffs and changing priorities.

Debrief

Capture what helped, what was unclear, what data was missing and which actions require follow-up.

Business continuity is organization-specific. Recovery priorities, legal duties, safety requirements, contracts, insurance terms and technical recovery methods should be validated by the responsible people in the organization.