“(…) war rooms are spaces where key people get together to solve a difficult problem”

What Is an “IT War Room”?

In software development, war rooms are used to solve P0 emergencies, crisis management, or project’s overdue.

War room sessions are bad from every angle that you see it: they are unplanned, disrupt the team’s current focus; they put everyone on edge, and set expectations high.

Even if you successfully managed them through, the most satisfactory outcome is to get done what you supposed to get done right when you started the session.

The best way to handle them is to treat them as subprojects: the world stops right when the war room session started. You need to set a deadline for the session (you can’t have a whole week war room session going on) and assign the critical tasks to the most responsive people.

Once you have your war room project in motion, there is no point in keeping the session’ everyone can go back to work and focus on this new high-risk/high-priority subproject.

Leo Celis