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4 Alternatives to War Rooms

Belinda Yung-Rubke

As Toxic War Rooms — a recent research paper from Seattle Pacific University — points out, War Rooms may not work as well as advertised, if at all.

Start with Part 1 of this blog: War Rooms for IT - More Harm Than Good?

So what’s the alternative? Is it even possible to build teams that can work together effectively to solve problems in highly charged, ever changing environments? According to the research, the answer is yes. Here’s how:

1. Give IT teams the ability to see the big picture

Individuals need to understand the whole system and their own place in it. This is called a "shared mental model". To get them out of their silos, they need a common monitoring system that shows how the individual elements of the whole interact with one another.

2. Provide ongoing feedback

If everyone is seeing the same data, they're in a better position to see how their own actions affect both the overall system as well as subsystems. Ongoing, shared feedback is essential to building teams that are more agile, self-adaptive and continuously improve their performance.

3. Establish trust

It is important to ensure that everyone understands and shares the same mission, vision and goals. Every group has conflict, but having an effective mechanism for resolving that conflict will have a direct impact on problem solving. Tools like the shared mental model and ongoing feedback with commonly accepted data make it easier for groups to get past personality conflicts and focus on the task at hand.

4. Reward team performance

By establishing a reward system that is based on the performance of the entire system, rather than individual domains and responsibilities, can promote better team collaboration. Metrics and diagnostic tools that focus on the entire system can reinforce the shared vision and shared responsibility for the only thing really matters: the customer experience.

Belinda Yung-Rubke is Director of Field Marketing for Fluke Networks.

Related Links:

www.flukenetworks.com

Click here to read the full paper from Seattle Pacific University

Click here to read Part 1 of this blog: War Rooms for IT - More Harm Than Good?

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4 Alternatives to War Rooms

Belinda Yung-Rubke

As Toxic War Rooms — a recent research paper from Seattle Pacific University — points out, War Rooms may not work as well as advertised, if at all.

Start with Part 1 of this blog: War Rooms for IT - More Harm Than Good?

So what’s the alternative? Is it even possible to build teams that can work together effectively to solve problems in highly charged, ever changing environments? According to the research, the answer is yes. Here’s how:

1. Give IT teams the ability to see the big picture

Individuals need to understand the whole system and their own place in it. This is called a "shared mental model". To get them out of their silos, they need a common monitoring system that shows how the individual elements of the whole interact with one another.

2. Provide ongoing feedback

If everyone is seeing the same data, they're in a better position to see how their own actions affect both the overall system as well as subsystems. Ongoing, shared feedback is essential to building teams that are more agile, self-adaptive and continuously improve their performance.

3. Establish trust

It is important to ensure that everyone understands and shares the same mission, vision and goals. Every group has conflict, but having an effective mechanism for resolving that conflict will have a direct impact on problem solving. Tools like the shared mental model and ongoing feedback with commonly accepted data make it easier for groups to get past personality conflicts and focus on the task at hand.

4. Reward team performance

By establishing a reward system that is based on the performance of the entire system, rather than individual domains and responsibilities, can promote better team collaboration. Metrics and diagnostic tools that focus on the entire system can reinforce the shared vision and shared responsibility for the only thing really matters: the customer experience.

Belinda Yung-Rubke is Director of Field Marketing for Fluke Networks.

Related Links:

www.flukenetworks.com

Click here to read the full paper from Seattle Pacific University

Click here to read Part 1 of this blog: War Rooms for IT - More Harm Than Good?

Hot Topics

The Latest

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 2 covers the challenges presented by AI, as well as solutions to those problems ...

In the final part of APMdigest's 2025 Predictions Series, industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025 ...

E-commerce is set to skyrocket with a 9% rise over the next few years ... To thrive in this competitive environment, retailers must identify digital resilience as their top priority. In a world where savvy shoppers expect 24/7 access to online deals and experiences, any unexpected downtime to digital services can lead to significant financial losses, damage to brand reputation, abandoned carts with designer shoes, and additional issues ...

Efficiency is a highly-desirable objective in business ... We're seeing this scenario play out in enterprises around the world as they continue to struggle with infrastructures and remote work models with an eye toward operational efficiencies. In contrast to that goal, a recent Broadcom survey of global IT and network professionals found widespread adoption of these strategies is making the network more complex and hampering observability, leading to uptime, performance and security issues. Let's look more closely at these challenges ...

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Broadcom

The 2025 Catchpoint SRE Report dives into the forces transforming the SRE landscape, exploring both the challenges and opportunities ahead. Let's break down the key findings and what they mean for SRE professionals and the businesses relying on them ...

Image
Catchpoint

The pressure on IT teams has never been greater. As data environments grow increasingly complex, resource shortages are emerging as a major obstacle for IT leaders striving to meet the demands of modern infrastructure management ... According to DataStrike's newly released 2025 Data Infrastructure Survey Report, more than half (54%) of IT leaders cite resource limitations as a top challenge, highlighting a growing trend toward outsourcing as a solution ...

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Gartner revealed its top strategic predictions for 2025 and beyond. Gartner's top predictions explore how generative AI (GenAI) is affecting areas where most would assume only humans can have lasting impact ...

The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating across the telecoms industry, with 88% of fixed broadband service providers now investigating or trialing AI automation to enhance their fixed broadband services, according to new research from Incognito Software Systems and Omdia ...

 

AWS is a cloud-based computing platform known for its reliability, scalability, and flexibility. However, as helpful as its comprehensive infrastructure is, disparate elements and numerous siloed components make it difficult for admins to visualize the cloud performance in detail. It requires meticulous monitoring techniques and deep visibility to understand cloud performance and analyze operational efficiency in detail to ensure seamless cloud operations ...

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