Determinants of the critical success factor of disaster recovery planning for information systems

Recent disaster recovery planning (DRP) literature has mainly focused on qualitative research, while neglecting the quantification of critical success factors (CSFs) for information systems function (ISF). This paper aims to address this issue.

This paper first conducts an extensive literature review, and then identifies 62 DRP measurement items for ISF. A questionnaire survey, which is based on these 62 measurement items, is used for data collection, and 129 managers of DRP in ISF participate in this paper.

Through the use of convergent factoring analysis, this paper identifies ten DRP CSFs for ISF, they are: DRP documentations, DRP steering committee and DRP testing, DRP policy and goals, DRP training, DRP maintenance and staff involvement, DRP minimum IS processing requirements, top management commitment to DRP, prioritization IS functions/services, external, off‐site back‐up system, and internal, and on‐site back‐up system.

This paper determines success factors based on a set of decision variables gathered from an extensive literature review in DRP in information systems.