The Importance of a Progressive Exercise Programme
Updated 19th June 2026Key Points
- A progressive exercise programme builds capability over time, rather than relying on one-off tests.
- It starts simple - building awareness and basic skills through structured tabletop exercises - before advancing to complex, realistic crisis simulations.
- Both ISO 22398 and the BCI Good Practice Guidelines emphasise that regular, progressive exercising is essential to develop competence and validate plans.
- A structured programme trains deputies and alternates, involves multiple response teams, and builds confidence in decision-making under pressure.
- Every exercise should end with structured debriefing and learning, feeding into a continuous improvement cycle.
Why a Progressive Approach Matters
Organisations should implement a progressive business continuity exercise programme to build capability over time, rather than relying on one-off tests. Both ISO 22398 and the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) Good Practice Guidelines emphasise that regular exercising is essential to develop competence, validate plans, and strengthen organisational resilience.
Stage One: Building Awareness, Knowledge and Skills
A progressive approach starts with building awareness, knowledge, and skills. Many staff may be unfamiliar with crisis roles or business continuity procedures, so early exercises should be simple and structured. These often take the form of tabletop exercises using symmetrical information, where all participants receive the same updates at the same time.
This helps teams understand the basics: how to interpret information, follow plans, and work together. At this stage, the focus is on learning, not operating under pressure, allowing participants to build confidence in a safe environment.
Stage Two: Validating Procedures and Plans
As capability grows, exercises can be used to validate procedures and plans. ISO guidance highlights that exercises should confirm whether documented arrangements are workable in practice. By stepping through realistic scenarios, organisations can test escalation processes, decision-making frameworks, and communication protocols.
This ensures that business continuity plans are not just theoretical, but practical and usable during disruption.
Stage Three: Exploring Risk Profiles Through Scenario Planning
A key benefit of a structured programme is the ability to use scenario planning to explore risk profiles. Different exercises can focus on varied threats such as cyber incidents, supply disruptions, or loss of facilities.
By doing this over time, organisations gain a broader understanding of their vulnerabilities, dependencies and how different risks interact. The BCI reinforces that exercising should reflect real organisational risks to ensure relevance and engagement.
Stage Four: Increasing Complexity with Crisis Simulations
As staff become more experienced, exercises should become more complex and challenging. This means moving from simple tabletop formats to asymmetric crisis simulations, where information is distributed unevenly between participants.
In these scenarios, individuals or teams may receive different pieces of information at different times, mirroring real crises. This forces teams to communicate effectively, share information, and build a common operating picture - a critical skill in any emergency.
How a Progressive Programme Builds Organisational Capability
Beyond the staged increase in complexity, a progressive programme develops several capabilities that one-off tests cannot:
| Capability | How a Progressive Programme Develops It |
|---|---|
| Confidence under pressure | Repeated exposure to simulated crises helps staff become more comfortable making decisions under pressure, reducing hesitation in real events and improving response speed. This is especially important for leaders making high-impact decisions. |
| Multi-team coordination | As exercises advance, crisis management teams, operational teams and support functions can work together, practising the flow of information and coordination across the organisation. |
| Depth and resilience | Deputies and alternates are trained so that, when key individuals are unavailable in a real incident, backup personnel are equally capable of fulfilling their roles. |
| Continuous improvement | Each exercise includes structured debriefing and learning, feeding lessons back into training, plans and procedures as part of an ongoing cycle. |
Training Deputies and Alternates
A progressive exercise programme also ensures that deputies and alternates are trained. In real incidents, key individuals may be unavailable, so it is essential that backup personnel are equally capable. Regular exercises provide opportunities for these individuals to practise their roles, ensuring depth and resilience within the organisation.
Debriefing and Continuous Improvement
Each exercise should include structured debriefing and learning, feeding into continuous improvement. This aligns with ISO and BCI principles that exercising is not a one-off activity, but part of an ongoing cycle of training, testing, and improvement.
For organisations wanting to understand where their current capability sits before designing a programme, an operational resilience and business continuity benchmarking assessment provides a useful baseline.
In Summary
A progressive exercise programme builds capability step by step - from awareness and basic skills to complex, realistic simulations. By validating plans, exploring risks, improving communication, and developing confident staff, organisations can ensure they are truly prepared to respond effectively when a real crisis occurs.
Take the Next Step
If your organisation wants to move beyond one-off tests and build a structured, progressive exercise programme, Needhams 1834 can help design and deliver the right journey for your level of resilience maturity.
Contact Needhams 1834 to arrange an initial consultation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a progressive exercise programme?
A progressive exercise programme is a structured approach to business continuity exercising that builds capability over time. It begins with simple, awareness-building exercises such as tabletop sessions and gradually advances to complex, realistic crisis simulations as staff competence and confidence develop.
Why is a progressive programme better than one-off tests?
One-off tests provide only a snapshot. A progressive programme develops competence, confidence and coordination over time, validates plans repeatedly under increasingly realistic conditions, trains backup personnel, and embeds continuous improvement - producing far greater organisational resilience.
What is the difference between symmetrical and asymmetric information in exercises?
In a symmetrical exercise, all participants receive the same information at the same time, which suits early learning-focused sessions. In an asymmetric exercise, information is distributed unevenly between participants, mirroring how information emerges during a real crisis and testing communication and coordination.
Why is it important to train deputies and alternates?
In a real incident, key individuals may be unavailable due to illness, travel or other commitments. Training deputies and alternates ensures that backup personnel can fulfil critical roles effectively, giving the organisation depth and resilience rather than dependence on a small number of individuals.
How does a progressive exercise programme support continuous improvement?
Each exercise ends with a structured debrief that captures what worked well and what needs to improve. These lessons feed back into updated plans, training and procedures, making exercising part of an ongoing cycle rather than a one-off event - in line with ISO 22398 and BCI good practice.
Sources and Further Reading
- ISO 22398:2013 - Guidelines for exercises
- ISO 22301:2019 - Business continuity management systems
- Business Continuity Institute - Good Practice Guidelines (GPG 7.0)
- Financial Conduct Authority - Operational resilience: insights and observations one year on
- Civil Contingencies Act 2004 - UK Legislation