Another product of crisis action planning is the Incident Strategic Plan (ISP) – a written document that provides overall direction for incident management and specifies milestones to be accomplished over time. It outlines the goals, operational priorities, and desired end-state that enable the UCG to determine where they are in the life cycle of the incident and when goals have been achieved.

Longer-term goals form the foundation of the ISP, laying out where the UCG wants response and recovery operations to be at selected times along a complete incident timeline. The UCG develops and approves these goals that are based on input from the command and general staff. The command and general staff then develop the milestones and estimated workload and staffing requirements.