Testing Your Business Continuity Plan: Practical Exercises for SMBs

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) looks great on paper. It sets the rules, roles, and fallback strategies for when something goes wrong. But until it's tested, it remains a theory. In real situations, people hesitate, systems behave unpredictably, and communication breaks down. Testing is what turns your plan into a living, working safeguard.

In our Business Continuity Plan guide, we stressed that a plan left untested quickly loses value. We encouraged readers to ask a simple question: "If this happened today, what would we do?". This article takes that idea further and shows how to test your continuity plan in practice.

Testing is important

During an outage, every minute counts. An untested plan is like a recipe never cooked before, it might look fine and easy, but If you try to do it fast while in a rush, you will probably make a mistake. Regular exercises build muscle memory for your team. When a provider fails or a system crashes, staff act with confidence rather than improvising in panic.

Testing also builds trust. Clients and auditors increasingly want to see evidence that companies don't just write plans, but also prove they work. SOC 2® often requires logs of continuity exercises. Just as incident management trains you to respond in the moment, continuity testing trains you to stay operational during longer disruptions.

Four main approaches to continuity testing

You can start small and scale up as your business grows.

1. Tabletop exercises
The simplest and least resource-intensive. Teams gather and walk through a disruption scenario step by step. Example: "What happens if our payment processor goes down for half a day?". This type of exercise validates roles, responsibilities, and decision-making without pressure.

2. Walkthrough drills
Here, the team actually performs specific tasks. If the plan calls for switching to a backup server, do it. If employees must dial an emergency hotline, have them make that call. Walkthroughs reveal practical gaps, like missing login credentials or outdated phone numbers, that discussions alone won't catch.

3. Simulation tests
These are more immersive. You might temporarily disable Wi-Fi in the office or shut down a non-critical app to see how staff react. Such simulations expose how people behave under mild stress and help measure whether recovery times meet your Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs).

4. Full-scale exercises
The most demanding but most revealing. These involve acting out an entire disruption, often including partners or vendors. A full-scale exercise could start with a mock phishing attack leading to a staged service outage. Teams then follow incident response playbooks and continuity procedures until recovery is achieved. Because they can disrupt normal operations, most organizations run them once a year.

The key is consistency. A mix of tabletop sessions, partial drills, and occasional simulations ensures both breadth and depth of preparation.

How to design effective tests

Preparation shapes the outcome. Keep these principles in mind:

• Define clear goals. Are you testing recovery time, communication flow, or decision-making speed?
• Choose relevant scenarios. Base them on your biggest risks—cyberattacks for SaaS companies, supply chain failures for logistics firms.
• Include the right people. Don't limit exercises to leadership. Involve frontline employees who will actually execute the plan.
• Measure results. Track detection time, escalation speed, and whether recovery targets were met.
• Document thoroughly. Auditors want proof: reports, logs, and lessons learned.
• Improve continuously. Testing is pointless unless it leads to updates and better processes.

How often should you test?

There's no universal formula, but good practice suggests:

• Tabletop discussions – several times per year.
• Process walkthroughs – quarterly for critical functions.
• Full-scale simulations – annually or every two years.

The important part is rhythm. Testing should not be a one-off project, but part of your company's culture.

Linking continuity testing with incident management

Testing doesn't stand alone, it connects directly with your incident management practices. Incident management answers: "How do we detect and contain a problem right now?". Continuity testing extends the timeline: "How do we keep the business running if the disruption lasts longer?".

Exercises help teams practice this transition. They show where incident playbooks stop and where continuity plans begin, ensuring there is no gap between fighting the fire and keeping operations alive.

Conclusion

A Business Continuity Plan gives you a framework, but only testing proves that the framework works. From short tabletop exercises to complex simulations, each test builds confidence, reveals weaknesses, and strengthens resilience.

As we concluded in our BCP article, preparation is everything: the more scenarios you plan for and practice, the less chaos you'll face when the real disruption comes. Every exercise, every improvement, and every trained employee reduces risk and increases your organization's ability to maintain trust and momentum in tough times.