Fallbackscenarios

Fallbackscenarios refer to predefined alternative states or plans that a system or organization can adopt when the primary operation is compromised. They are used in risk management, system design, and business continuity to preserve safety, availability, and value.

A fallback scenario identifies a critical function, specifies an alternative approach, and defines the conditions under which the fallback is activated, as well as the criteria for abandoning it when normal operation resumes.

The process involves risk assessment and failure mode analysis, mapping dependencies, enumerating viable fallbacks, and assessing feasibility, costs, and time to switch. Roles and triggers are documented, and changes are controlled. Regular testing and drills verify that the fallback paths work as intended.

Implementation patterns include redundant components, graceful degradation, failover to standby systems, feature flags, and circuit breakers. Monitoring and alerting detect triggering conditions; runbooks describe activation steps; post-incident reviews refine scenarios.

Metrics commonly used include time to activation, time to steady state, service level achieved, data loss, and user impact. Fallback scenarios should be revisited as systems evolve, with updates after incidents and periodic exercises.

In practice, examples include cloud failover to a secondary data center, degraded functionality when a service is under stress, detours in transportation networks, and contingency purchasing arrangements in supply chains.