Ensuring that the help desk maintains its availability targets is of course part and parcel of service level management. This particular aspect of planning is usually known as disaster recovery planning.
This boils down to planning to ensure that dispruption and unavailability is minimized in the event of a disaster or serious problem. It includes not only the implementation of rigorous back-up/contingency regimes, but the development of a fully comprehensive and tested disaster recovery plan.
Disaster recovery planning can form part of a wider organization wide initiaitive. However, whether this is the case, or whether it is an entirely stand alone help desk exercise, there is no escaping its necessity.
DEVELOPING THE DISASTER RECOVERY PLAN
The central focus of the disaster recovery planning exercise for the help desk function is the plan itself. This should be devloped to match the individual needs of the particular area and function.
As such, a degree of study will be required: What are the prime functions of the help desk? How much unavailability could be tolerated for each? What are the business implications for different levels of unavailability for different functions? And many others.
The plan itself should be commensurate with these needs. It should not only be flexible and easy to understand, but should be a 'living document', evolving to ensure it always covers the current situation.
Clearly this is not a five minute job. However, most organizations now utilize an existing framework or template when building their plans. This does help make management far easier and brings tried and trusted consistency into play.
To assist, we have again identified a couple of portals which focus exclusively upon disaster recovery planning: Disaster Recovery World and for a template based solution'
Disaster Recovery Plan Template