In my experience, recovering from a system crash during peak hours with minimal disruption involves a swift and organized response. Start by informing users and stakeholders about the issue and expected recovery time. Quickly assess the extent of the problem and prioritize critical systems and services. Mobilize your IT team to address the root cause and implement fixes. Communicate progress updates regularly to keep everyone informed. After resolving the issue, conduct a post-mortem review to understand what went wrong and how to prevent future occurrences.

In my experience, handling a system crash during peak hours requires a calm, strategic approach to minimize impact. Begin by promptly notifying users and stakeholders about the issue and providing an estimated resolution timeline. Assess the scope of the problem and prioritize restoring essential systems first. Deploy your IT team to identify the root cause and implement quick, effective solutions. Keep everyone updated on progress to maintain transparency and trust. Once the issue is resolved, conduct a thorough review to analyze the failure, learn from it, and implement preventive measures to reduce the risk of future disruptions.

1. Assess the Situation Quickly 2. Activate the Incident Response Plan 3. Switch to Backup Systems or Redundant Infrastructure 4. Restore Data and Services 5. Communicate with Users 6. Implement a Temporary Workaround 7. Troubleshoot and Fix the Root Cause 8. Review and Improve

It’s most important to identify the cause and the extent of the problem. And to understand what the problem actually is. If it is the result of an implemented system change there should have been a risk assessment with recovery strategies included in the Implementation Plan. But the cause could be elsewhere; capacity or cyber security etc or a change in a dependant system managed by another party. If it is a world wide problem, then recovery must be across different time zones and jurisdictions. Cool heads are needed!

In fact, every team I've managed has a contingency system in place with automatic balancing. In other words, if one system is down, the other has to come on immediately. How do we do this? Once every two months we do a forced simulation to see if everything is OK.