A rampant DIY excel spreadsheet, dozens of emails and phone calls that make an angry DR manager's ear burn? Nope, at Tatra Bank in Slovakia they were running disaster recovery (DR) tests much smarter before the advent of TaskControl. they can coordinate three dozen IT people during a weekend event even more elegantly.
DR. TEST CALM AND NERVELESS? AND CAN WE SEE HIM?
It's been a while since we did a project at Raiffeisenbank they have developed a tool for real-time management of change projects. Since then, it has proven to be not a single-use application, but a sought-after assistant in several sectors. We have therefore continued to improve it and have given it the name TaskControl.
Many large companies are overcoming the wall of the regular DR test with the classic weaponry: a bunch of phone calls, a shared chat, a shared excel spreadsheet, the all-night sea of patience of several coordinators and trying to manage stress and avoid chaos.
This is exhausting, error-prone work, often without the ability to retrospectively optimize the DR test process. V Tatra banka were thankfully further away.
PITFALLS OF INTERACTIVE REAL-TIME MANAGEMENT
IT administrators here used to create disaster recovery plans Microsoft Project published to SharePoint. The effort to reconcile the functionalities of both tools has resulted in minor or major pitfalls:
- Administrators had to be trained.
- The structure of all the tasks in the DR plan was not very clear.
- The distribution of messages among team members was complicated and did not involve manual sending of notifications and SMS messages.
- The actual course of the tests was not easy to trace.
- Anyone could have accidentally marked the tasks as completed and disrupted the flow of the test.
- It was not easy to obtain a log from the DR plan output.
SWITCH TO TASKCONTROL
The opportunity for improvement arose at a joint meeting of DR managers in Vienna, where Tatra banka representatives heard from Raiffeisenbank about their good experience with TaskControl. When they were given the opportunity to demonstrate the app at the earliest opportunity, their enthusiasm did not wane.
As soon as we got the green light, we arranged for the customer workshop, during which we introduced the participants to TaskControl in detail. This allowed us to help the client to adapt the application to their own requirements.
Due to strict security measures, TaskControl had to be connected to Active Directory in the customer's environment without direct access to application server administration. We managed this challenging step thanks to smooth communication with Tatra banka administrators.
The DR test control plan contained, after updating, respectful 1300 tasks. We were curious to see how they would perform during the pilot live test.
SIMPLER, CLEARER, FASTER AND SAFER
The test came a month later. And all the participants praised the following in particular:
- TaskControl no need to install and its operation does not require demanding training.
- The structure of the DR plan is as follows very clear, each team member can only see their part of the tasks.
- Automatically sent notifications and SMS messages facilitate the coordination of activities.
- The DR coordinator has looser hands for early problem detection and resolution.
- He can mark the task as completed only the one to whom it belongs.
- Exiting the plan can be easier export to log.
- The previous plan goes easily to be used for the preparation of a new.
In the end, TaskControl failed only in pilot testing at Tatra banka. Moreover, it was well received by end users and has since been regularly used in the planning and management of other organizationally demanding projects. In 2021, for example has proven itself in the relocation of the bank's data center.
