10 Steps to building an IT Response Plan

1.   Review the alert scripts from your monitoring equipment ensuring pertinent information is sent to the engineer

2.   Prioritise your alerts  – if the alert is critical then it requires urgent resolution

3.   Identify your alert process – who should be contacted? Who should the alert be escalated to in case of failure to resolve?

4.   Identify mode of communication – email, SMS or Voice

5.   Map out the expected responses from recipients to ensure you can deal with any further escalation

6.   Capture the process – how is the incident reported?

7.   Capture the intelligence gathered:

• Type of outage
• Time of outage
• Time of response
• Mode of response
• Time to resolve

8.   Capture KPI to measure responses and plan for process improvement

9.   Flow chart the process to ensure all scenarios are accounted for

10.  Build your escalation plan & test