Who doesn’t love a good template? Runbook templates are a powerful tool for IT operations processes. They get teams started on a new process quickly and provide standardization through predefined process flows.
This article describes runbook templates, how they help organizations, and the role of automation in enhancing their effectiveness. It also overviews the benefits of Cutover’s automated runbook technology and how templates help simplify and scale IT operations processes, including an IT DR runbook example.
What are runbook templates?
Before we dive into runbook templates, let’s take a quick refresher: What is a runbook in software? A runbook is a comprehensive, step-by-step guide that outlines all tasks and their dependencies for an IT operations process like IT disaster or cloud recovery, cloud migration, application release, and more.
Runbook templates can amplify the benefits of a runbook. Runbook templates provide a structured, yet customizable framework for creating and executing runbooks. Templates are particularly useful in providing the structure and consistency needed to execute large-scale IT operations.
Advantages of using runbook templates
Runbook templates are predefined, yet bespoke documentation that provide a structured framework for performing operations. Organizations can tailor runbook templates to suit their unique needs and workflows.
Runbook templates help enterprises to streamline processes through:
- Standardization - provide your teams clarity on the IT operations process with a consistent structure, making it easier to understand and follow.
- Governance - ensure your teams are following procedures and using the correct process plan with approval processes for runbook templates.
- Time saving - an IT runbook template provides the foundation for your IT operations processes so you aren’t starting from scratch each time.
- Error reduction - templates provide consistency and reduce the risk of potential errors, such as using the wrong name for a task, assigning a task to the wrong person, task duplication or missing a task completely.
The different types of runbook templates
There are three different types of runbook templates: Manual, automated, and collaborative automated.
Manual runbooks
Manual runbooks offer step-by-step information to assist users — usually an organization's IT department — in using standard tools (such as Excel spreadsheets or Word documents) to complete described tasks. While manual runbooks are generally a first step in standardizing tasks and operations, they are prone to human error due to their reliance on manual processes.
Automated runbooks
Just as the name implies, automated runbooks are designed to execute predefined tasks or workflows that don’t require human oversight once triggered. These runbooks are typically utilized for a repetitive task that is well-defined and doesn't require manual decision making. Characteristically, automated runbooks are preconfigured with specific actions, conditions and triggers, among other components, to ensure the reliable and consistent delivery of a task.
Collaborative automated runbooks
The best of both worlds, collaborative automated runbooks offer hybrid functionality — combining both automation and manual intervention. These runbooks use a combination of tasks carried out by both people and automated solutions to manage complex operations.
Collaborative automated runbooks are often considered optimal compared to their fully manual and automated counterparts as they walk the line between efficiency and control. Like manual runbooks, collaborative automated runbooks are leveraged to complete a wide range of organizational tasks and allow for greater flexibility, efficiency, and reduced human error.
Creating a runbook template: The basics
Before we consider the steps of constructing a runbook template — or what to look for in one — here are the components that each runbook template should include.
Key components of a runbook template
As we’ve touched on, templates may be adjusted according to the individual needs of an organization and evolving best practices. Yet, irrespective of tailored customizations, there are key runbook template elements that are adopted across the board:
- Task ID: A unique identifier applied to each task, allowing for simple reference and tracking.
- Task name/title: A clear label for the task, making it simple to identify its purpose.
- Description: A high-level overview of the task, providing necessary context.
- Task owner: The individual or team responsible for executing the task.
- Dependencies/prerequisites: Any task, resource and/or condition that must be fulfilled before the subsequent task can be initiated.
- Stakeholders: Those who are involved in the event that the task is part of.
- Estimated duration: The approximate time required to complete the task.
And of course, each runbook will contain the task details — a comprehensive breakdown of the steps, actions, and/or procedures involved to complete the task. A runbook’s contents should pertain to one scenario, rather than covering multiple.
Steps to create an effective IT runbook template
The creation of a runbook template can be segmented into four stages: Planning, building, testing and approval, and maintenance — let’s take a look into each.
Planning runbook templates
In the context of an IT disaster recovery runbook template, begin by clearly defining the operation and its scope — proper task definition often necessitates gaining a comprehensive understanding of your organization’s IT operations. Hence, look to gain a holistic view of your IT infrastructure, considering the specifics at the application/service level.
In the same vein, consider incident reports to help identify recurring, common tasks and prevalent concerns to each application. Document those which are of a more critical nature for each application to ensure a more targeted and efficient recovery process, tailored to its specific needs and dependencies. This approach enhances the IT disaster recovery runbook by focusing on high-priority applications and the potential impact of failures.
Upon identifying pain points and gaining a full scope of your IT infrastructure, look for any existing processes and/or past runbooks that aim to resolve the concern you intend to address in this new runbook. Oftentimes, there are established procedures that have been leaned on in the past to resolve the same or similar issues which often take the form of static documents or spreadsheets. Leveraging such resources can expedite the runbook process and better inform its contents.
Building runbook templates
In the building phase of the runbook template, there are a handful of factors to consider:
- Provide the necessary permissions, allowing each of the relevant stakeholders access to the runbook template’s centralized location
- Configure notifications to inform parties of the template’s existence and notify them when there are updates or when an incident occurs that requires the template to be used
- Review the critical path to ensure task dependencies are correct
- Integrate existing tools so that your manual and automated steps are visible and executable in one centralized place
- Set up your dashboards, recovery time objectives and other relevant metrics that you intend to measure against
Testing and approval of runbook templates
After you build the runbook template, test it with the relevant teams to ensure that the critical path and task dependencies are optimal. Similarly, gather feedback from users and stakeholders and make adjustments accordingly. Furthermore, conduct a runthrough of the tasks to validate the effectiveness of the runbook and that timings are correct.
Runbook template maintenance
Factor in both regular maintenance checks and ad-hoc updates in relation to technological, procedural, and/or organizational changes. At minimum, your runbook template should be updated every time there is a significant change to your application or service and reviewed annually.
Best practices for IT runbook templates
While runbook templates are comprehensive, often containing hundreds or thousands of tasks, dependencies, and milestones, they don’t have to be overly complex. The ‘six A’s’ provides a common framework and best practices for runbook template creation.
The 6 A's of runbook templates
The ‘six A’s’ are a commonly used framework for both the formulation and re-evaluation of your runbook templates to ensure a template they are comprehensive. —. Your runbook template should be:
Actionable: Ensure that the runbook template facilitates clear and concise action points. Any user should be able to follow the step-by-step instructions provided to bring about the intended actions. Actionable instructions should be devoid of vague terminology but rather use precise and relevant language.
Accessible: Runbook templates should be readily accessible to all relevant stakeholders. This generally means storing the runbook template in a centralized location with the necessary security measures in place — preferably on a digital platform.
Accurate: A runbook template should reflect the most up-to-date processes and should be regularly reviewed and updated in light of changes to infrastructure or requirements. A runbook platform that provides comprehensive performance data also facilitates continuous improvement.
Authoritative: Part-and-parcel with the accuracy of a runbook is its authoritativeness. Subject matter experts should be called upon, when necessary, to review and endorse the runbook template, ensuring its credibility and reliability.
Adaptive: Runbooks templates should be malleable, able to adjust according to changing circumstances. As technology — and its processes and systems — evolve, runbook templates must adapt to such changes. Any stakeholder should be able to leverage and modify a copy of a template to meet their circumstances, such as the specific recovery needs after an outage or cyber attack.
Approval: Before any runbook template is made available to a wide set of users it needs to be approved and have a set expiration date. You can ensure high quality runbooks by means of review in a timely manner, through a create/review/approve workflow. With approved templates you can ensure success by encouraging users to make use of best-practice templates.
Furthermore, runbook templates should be subject to ongoing reviews. As an organization and its systems and infrastructure progress, runbook templates need to be updated and reapproved accordingly.
Runbook template example
Let’s look at a runbook template example. This is a Cutover runbook template for an AWS application recovery. A simple cloud DR runbook template, it includes 38 pre-defined tasks across three workstreams: Pre-failover setup, failover, and validation.
Automating runbook templates: Enhancing operational efficiency
As processes become more solidified and the potential for automation becomes apparent, organizations are afforded the opportunity to further streamline operations, saving time and other resources in the process.
Identifying processes for automation
Why and how you automate processes will largely depend on the nature of the task, the available technology, and organizational goals. Generally speaking: Determine automatable processes based on a task’s repetitiveness, propensity to consume time, resource intensity, and tendency to give rise to human error.
Tools for runbook automation
Additionally, identify and integrate relevant runbook automation tools and platforms that align with your organization’s infrastructure to facilitate a centralized source of execution. This may include IT service management (ITSM) platforms, scripting languages, and other relevant IT tooling.
Cutover: Dynamic, automated runbook templates
Cutover enables you to create and execute runbooks and templates for IT disaster recovery, cloud migration, release management, and more.
Additionally, some of Cutover’s products like Cutover Recover include pre-defined runbook templates to get you started on your IT disaster recovery journey faster.
Features of Cutover’s IT DR automated runbook templates
Cutover’s runbook template features include:
- A central repository to store all runbook templates and enable rapid mobilization spanning hundreds or thousands of applications
- Import tasks from spreadsheets into the runbook template
- Template workflows to approve or reject templates
- Notifications when templates require rejections or approvals, have approaching expiration dates, or have expired
- Read-only mode once a template version has expired or been rejected
- Version history to track all variations or restore a previous version, if needed
- An immutable and auto-generated audit log that tracks template changes to help meet regulatory compliance
Results of using Cutover’s automated runbooks and templates
Orchestrating and automating your technology operations with Cutover runbooks and templates enables you to reduce planning and execution time by upward of 50%, reduce audit preparation time by 80%, and enhance your organization’s overall agility and resistance in the face of operational challenges.
Learn more about our automated runbook templates, how to create a runbook, IT disaster recovery runbooks, and more. Book a demo today!