The term “war room” seems to pair perfectly with end-of-the-world movies. Picture the president, sitting in a bunker-like room, surrounded by aides and Cabinet members who are providing up-to-the-minute details on the given world threat. The president must make the right decision, with no time to spare.
For most companies, this war room might seem a bit out of touch. Still, many companies deploy war rooms to solve specific problems, and IT is no exception. In this article, we’ll define the business use and benefits of an IT war room, help you determine whether a war room is for you, and provide war room best practices.
Unlike a traditional office environment, war rooms are spaces where key people get together to solve a difficult problem. Also known as situation rooms, control rooms, or command centers, war rooms should always have the goal of solving a difficult or specific problem via clear communication and improved workflows.
War rooms can be a useful tool in any type of project management. The goal of your war room could be any combination of the following:
IT war rooms, specifically, often aim to pinpoint a tech problem’s root cause. For example, a war room with an IT focus might have goals like how to solve slowdowns or outages, improve network inefficiencies, or contribute to a development project. IT war rooms can be particularly useful in agile environments, where you may need inter-scrum communication.
So, who should be involved in a war room? It’s essential to bring together both subject matter experts and key stakeholders, like project decision makers and even executives.
War rooms and meetings aren’t the same. Unlike a normal meeting, a war room should mix people together who might not otherwise collaborate. War rooms also last longer; meetings might go 30 minutes or one hour. The best war rooms are located in a dedicated space for one or more full days or for a few hours over a week.
Most importantly, war rooms should feel different from meetings. Whereas a meeting might have one or two leaders sharing specific information, war rooms should encourage all attendees to speak up, move around, ask questions, and seek solutions. Generally, a war room feels more casual but also more engaging than a typical meeting.
Proponents of IT war rooms tout many benefits. Perhaps the biggest benefit is the increased productivity. Scientists at the University of Michigan compared groups of software developers working in war rooms versus employees in a more traditional office environment. Their research illustrated an increase in productivity—some were four times more productive than their solo counterparts. Another bonus? The war room workers liked their new environment better than they initially anticipated.
That productivity increase may be attributable to several benefits of working in a war room:
Even if your IT war room doesn’t realize every single one of these benefits, collaborative face-to-face time among employees is valuable, especially in today’s remote workforce.
If you’ve ever left a war room with warm, fuzzy feelings about your colleagues but without hard decisions and actionable solutions, that war room was not successful. Like any project management approach, IT war rooms aren’t always all they’re cracked up to be. In fact, some IT professionals believe that companies can overuse war rooms, which results in inefficiencies—exactly what the war room is meant to fix.
A variety of factors can make it difficult to solve IT issues: hybrid environments, multi-vendor deployments, and growing complexity and scale within enterprise infrastructure. Plus, companies still require control and security similar to on-premises infrastructure, and many departments are siloed even in terms of their technology. This decentralized technology approach may not befit a traditional war room.
If IT war rooms are meant to pinpoint a tech problem’s root cause, such decentralized technology makes it difficult for two main reasons:
In these cases, a war room results not in a quick solve but in wasted time, money, and resources. A war room that creates more problems—blamed employees, mismanaged time, sunk costs—is no war room at all.
Do you need an IT war room? Consider these factors when determining if a war room is the right fit for your problem.
Whether you’re convinced your company or project needs a war room or you’re looking to freshen up your worn-out war room ways, here are some best practices for creating a war room.
First, there are best practices on how to setup your war room:
Once you’ve optimized your war room setup, use these best practices to establish the right protocol and attitudes for everyone inside the war room:
Cutting edge AIOps technologies like AI and machine learning might offer a solution to failed IT war rooms. Tools like real-time infrastructure monitoring and automation can go hand-in-hand with what us humans excel at: providing accurate insight of more sophisticated situations. With customized, up-to-date tools and the smarts of your best colleagues, IT war rooms can go back to what makes them successful—resolving infrastructure slowdowns, outages, and other problems in no time at all.
Tired of nightmare war rooms? Check out this webinar.