The purpose of a tabletop exercise is not to confirm that an emergency response plan exists. It is to discover how well that plan performs when assumptions are challenged.

A tabletop exercise only becomes valuable when it reveals weak points clearly enough to improve the next session.

A tabletop exercise may feel productive in the room, but the real test is whether it reveals the decisions, delays, and weak points that need to improve.

A tabletop exercise only becomes useful when injects, decisions, and checkpoints are captured clearly enough to improve future sessions.

A good tabletop exercise should produce clear decisions, tracked actions, and a usable report. Without that, the session becomes difficult to review and harder to improve.