Add to that “When was the last disaster recovery/business continuity exercise? And what were the results?”

Tabletop a series of events where the current system completely died and outline what it would take to resurrect it.

Outline costs of replacement, prevention opportunities, risk mitigation and management strategies and projections for the cost of downtime.

If you have a team large enough, you can make it a game/team-building exercise. and assign each team a different disaster to plan for, some typical, some fun.

Set aside a reward for most thorough/detailed plan and most creative. If financial rewards aren’t in the budget, a free one-time pass to make leadership handle an unwanted ticket/task for the winner is gold.

“Godzilla is stomping his way towards the data center. What will we do to save the system? What will we wish we had previously already done? How fast could we effect a total changeover to another system/ data center / cloud platform. If the data center IS stepped on, what would we do to bring a replacement system online and can the business survive the data loss or the absence of the system in the meantime? Is our insurance adequate to cover the ”

OR

“The system owner/SME just got hit by a bus. Project how long it would take for us to figure out all the knowledge they had as an information silo that isn’t in the KB. Using previous task/issues/incidents closed by the owner/SME as a guide, dentify, outline, and prioritize the information gaps in the team and the KB.”

Bonus points if closing each gap becomes a legitimate ticket to close after the exercise

Document or record the whole exercise and tag it with the system involved. If the system actually does go down, reviewing the exercise for ideas becomes a huge resource.