---
title: "Tabletop exercise"
description: "A scheduled, scored rehearsal of an incident playbook against a named failure mode, producing the same records a real incident would (record, clocks, draft reports, containment events) tagged as a…"
canonical: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/tabletop-exercise
author: "Jorge García Aibar"
license: "CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)"
doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197
version: "0.5.0"
updated: 2026-09-24
---

# Tabletop exercise

A scheduled, scored rehearsal of an incident playbook against a named failure mode, producing the same records a real incident would (record, clocks, draft reports, containment events) tagged as a drill. The playbook is the claim; the drill result is the evidence.

- Developed in: [ch. 17, Playbooks, RACI and drills](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/incidents#playbooks-raci-and-drills)
- Chapters: [ch. 17, Incidents](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/incidents)
- In the glossary chapter: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/glossary#t-tabletop-exercise

## Sources

Defined by this Body of Knowledge: the section it is developed in is the source.