pmstudio-dr

DR Plan — Disaster Recovery Plan

Purpose

Generates a Disaster Recovery plan scoped to a specific product. For SaaS products (where the vendor owns infrastructure), this plan focuses on what Coco Inc controls: data exports, integration failover, access recovery, communication, and business continuity.

Process

Step 1: Read Context

Read all that exist:

• CLAUDE.local.md — architecture, integrations, vendor info, data strategy
• PRD/*.html or PRD/*.md — NFRs, technical considerations, integrations, data architecture
• Architecture/ — system diagrams, data flows
• Operational/IRP-*.html — incident response plan (if exists, reference for communication)

Step 2: Determine Product Type

From context, classify the product:

Type	DR Focus	Example
SaaS (customer)	Vendor dependency, data portability, alternative workflows	(third-party SaaS)
Self-hosted	Infrastructure recovery, backup/restore, failover	Custom app on EKS
Hybrid	Both vendor and self-hosted components	SaaS + custom middleware

Adjust the plan scope accordingly. For SaaS, skip infrastructure sections (that's the vendor's problem). Add vendor SLA and data portability sections.

Step 3: Ask Discovery Questions

Only ask what can't be inferred:

1. Business criticality tier? (Tier 1 critical / Tier 2 important / Tier 3 standard)
2. What's the maximum tolerable downtime? (This becomes RTO)
3. What's the maximum tolerable data loss? (This becomes RPO)
4. Are there manual workarounds if the product is down? (e.g., "we can use Excel for 48 hours")
5. Vendor SLA? (uptime commitment, support response times, data export capabilities)
6. Backup strategy? (Does data export to Snowflake/SharePoint? How often?)

Step 4: Generate DR Plan

Output: Operational/DR-Plan-{ProductName}-{Date}.html

Self-contained HTML with clean typography and print CSS.

11 sections:

1. Purpose & Scope

• Product name, ProdID, instances covered
• What this plan covers and doesn't cover
• Relationship to vendor's own DR plan

2. Service Classification

• Business criticality tier with justification
• Data classification (Purple/Red/Yellow/Green)
• Regulatory or compliance requirements affecting recovery
• Business impact of downtime (per hour/day)

3. RTO/RPO Targets

Per-component target table:

Component	RTO	RPO	Justification
Core platform	4 hours	24 hours	Vendor SLA: 99.9% uptime
Data in Snowflake	2 hours	0 (real-time sync)	Analytics feeds downstream
Integrations (SSO)	1 hour	N/A	Users locked out
Integrations (ServiceNow)	8 hours	N/A	Ticket creation manual fallback

4. Disaster Scenarios

Ranked by likelihood x impact:

1. Vendor platform outage (most likely) — vendor is down, product inaccessible
2. Data corruption — bad data entered or sync error corrupts records
3. Access loss — SSO failure, license revocation, permission misconfiguration
4. Integration failure — upstream/downstream system breaks connection
5. Security breach — unauthorized access, data exfiltration
6. Vendor business failure — vendor acquired, shut down, or ends product

For each scenario: description, likelihood, impact, detection method.

5. Recovery Procedures

Per-scenario step-by-step. See references/saas-dr-patterns.md for SaaS-specific recovery patterns.

Structure per scenario:

• Trigger condition (how do we know this is happening)
• Immediate actions (first 15 minutes)
• Short-term recovery (first 4 hours)
• Full recovery (to meet RTO)
• Verification checklist

6. Communication Plan

• Who to notify per scenario and severity
• Templates (reference IRP if it exists, or provide standalone)
• Vendor communication (support ticket + account manager)
• Stakeholder updates cadence during outage

7. Dependencies

• External systems required for recovery
• Vendor contacts (support, account manager, escalation)
• SLA commitments and how to invoke them
• Third-party services (SSO provider, email, etc.)

8. Data Backup & Restoration

• What data is backed up (by vendor, by Coco Inc)
• Backup frequency and retention
• Where backups are stored
• Restoration procedure (step-by-step)
• Data validation after restoration

9. Manual Workarounds

• What business processes can continue without the product
• Excel/SharePoint fallback procedures
• Duration the workaround is sustainable
• Data reconciliation procedure when product is restored

10. Testing Schedule

• DR test cadence (annually minimum, semi-annually recommended)
• Test scenarios (tabletop, partial recovery, full recovery)
• Last test date and results
• Next scheduled test
• Test success criteria

11. Review & Maintenance

• Review cadence: semi-annually or after any DR event
• Approval chain (PM, Security POC, Sponsor)
• Version history
• Distribution list

Step 5: Present for Review

Show the plan outline with key decisions highlighted:

• RTO/RPO targets
• Scenario prioritization
• Manual workaround availability

Ask for approval before writing.

Critical Rules

1. RTO/RPO must be numbers, not words. "As fast as possible" is not an RTO. Push for specific hours.
2. Vendor DR is not your DR. The vendor's uptime SLA is an input to your plan, not a substitute for it. Your plan covers what happens on Coco Inc's side.
3. Manual workarounds are critical. For every scenario, document what the business does while the product is down. If there's no workaround, that's a risk to flag.
4. Data portability is DR. If you can't get data out of the product, you can't recover from vendor failure. Document export capabilities.
5. Test the plan. A plan that's never been tested is a wish list. Include a testing schedule and success criteria.