Preparing for disaster

You don't plan on having a fire burn your business down, yet you do have insurance, fire extinguishers handy, as well as sprinklers and alternate exit routes.

Why? because you want to be ready to tackle the fire when it's a mere flame, so that it doesn't do more damage than needed. You also want to be able to recover as fast as possible.

Similarly, you want a backup plan for your business and for each project.

This could involve:

• Backup plans and restore plans
• Off-site copies of important data
• Distributing your data centers
• Knowing your people's skill sets to be able to replace them and/or switch between them

Each of these deserves a post of its own. A post that almost anybody could write, and probably should; for their own project.

An overlooked part of the plan is data collection.

In future posts we will elaborate on:

• Which data to collect
• When to collect data
• How long to store the data
• Know how accurate your data is
• Tracking changes

When everything is going well, the need for data collection is not obvious. When things go wrong, data becomes one of your most powerful tools.

Once you understand the power of your data, you will realize that even when things are going right, you can probably improve them if you analyze the data.

- Danny