PWPM Wiki

Disaster Recovery Setup Change Log

This is a practical guide to building a change log for a disaster recovery setup project — a record of change requests and their decisions, adapted to the realities of establishing backup and disaster-recovery capability.

What a Change Log is

A change log is a record of change requests and their decisions. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Change Log. On a disaster recovery setup project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.

Why it matters for a Disaster Recovery Setup project

Disaster Recovery Setup projects live or die on establishing backup and disaster-recovery capability. A well-built change log gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how disaster recovery setup projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.

What to include

  • Change ID and description
  • Impact assessment
  • Decision and date
  • Updated baselines

Disaster Recovery Setup-specific considerations

Tailor the change log to the risks that most often derail disaster recovery setup projects:

  • Recovery-time objectives
  • Untested failover
  • Ongoing maintenance

Example

On a real disaster recovery setup project, the change log would be shaped by establishing backup and disaster-recovery capability. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — recovery-time objectives, untested failover, ongoing maintenance — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.