Dossier · Reversibility audit
Start from the service to preserve, identify the assets required for recovery and expose second-order dependencies before any exit test.
The register starts with the function the organisation refuses to lose. Every critical journey is connected to the data, models, infrastructure, identities, interfaces, rights and skills without which it cannot run on another target.
This avoids two false positives: assuming an exportable asset is sufficient when it relies on a non-portable service, or calling a dependency critical without showing which function it blocks.
A useful record must remain unambiguous months later and still point to the same asset.
Separation prevents a data export from being presented as reversibility of the whole service.
An interface may be documented while relying on an identity controlled by the source. A model may be replaceable while its evaluation set is not. The register therefore retains upstream and downstream relations, flow direction and the consequence of a break.
Read the chain in both directions: from service to assets to find what is missing, then from each asset to journeys to measure what an outage interrupts.
A competing product does not prove that a component is substitutable within the required time.
| Observation | Testable question | Expected evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Availability | Has a compatible target been identified? | Target, version and owner |
| Portability | Can the necessary assets be transferred? | Export, rights and integrity check |
| Reconstruction | Can the environment be recreated? | Replayed deployment and logs |
| Autonomy | Can the target team take over? | Observed execution without unplanned help |
The supplier, contract, model, export format and team change. The register carries an observation date, version, source and verification status. An old assertion is not automatically renewed.
The register is ready when it determines which assets to export, journeys to replay, rights to confirm, people to mobilise and dependencies whose presence after switching would make the exit unacceptable.
Primary sources
Last documentary review: 6 September 2026.
Switching data-processing services and removing exit obstacles.
Security choices, customer responsibilities, reversibility and operational skills.
Guidelines for auditing management systems: principles, programme, audit evidence.
Before you write to us
An inventory names what exists. The register connects every asset to a critical function, version, owner, evidence and the other elements on which its recovery depends.
The mandate bounds the register to the functions and environments examined. Exclusions remain visible with their rationale; they are not treated as absence of dependency.
The register records the function, exchanged data, rights, identified alternatives and outage effect. The test then exercises substitution or retains the impossibility as a residual dependency.
Reversibility dossier
Present the service and intended target. We assess whether the scope can become a testable register.
Scope the register