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Template (Checklist) for IT Outage Planning

Audience

Project Managers

will quickly understand that the server shutdown required to implement the changes isn't always possible on short notice. This document helps the project manager to initiate timely enough the outage planning process and avoid delay at the end of the project.

Business Departments

need to provide workarounds and related instructions for employees for the time when the IT system is not available.

Marketing and Communications Department

needs to prepare the communication to customers, e.g. formulate messages to be displayed on the website and played on the IVR and decide how long in advance this will be communicated to customers.

IS / IT Director, Operations Manager and QA Manager

expect evidence that all required issues are addressed, documented and followed up. If all participating parties will fill in all templates in this document, then this documentation will meet their requirements.

Service Level Manager

needs to check if there exist SLA's for any of the direct or indirect affected systems. If such SLA's exist, then the impact on those SLA's needs to be evaluated.

Compliance Manager

needs to check if there are any legal requirements or industry regulations affected, e.g. financial institutions who have to deliver daily reports to an external supervisory board.

Not intended for...

Dedicated Manager for Outage Planning and Outage Coordination

In case that in your company the position of "Central Outage Coordinator / Manager", probably supported by a dedicated team, exists since long time, than you don't need this document, as in this case this team knowing all about the complexity of planning and coordinating outages already developed their own checklists and templates customized for your organization.
But for someone who just started an initiative for Outage Planning and Outage Coordination this template and checklist will be very helpful.

Contingency Manager

Usually this job role is mentioned in context of "Disaster Recovery (DR)", but the manual workarounds prepared for the disaster scenario might be a viable option for the duration of the planned outage. An organization at that maturity level will not need this template. Nevertheless the Contingency Manager might want to use each outage to validate his contingency plans.