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

Related Vendors

The Latest

Gartner: Regular AI System Assessments Triple the Likelihood of High GenAI Value

Organizations that perform regular audits and assessments of AI system performance and compliance are over three times more likely to achieve high GenAI value than organizations that do not, according to a survey by Gartner ...

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Kubernetes has become the backbone of cloud infrastructure, but it's also one of its biggest cost drivers. Recent research shows that 98% of senior IT leaders say Kubernetes now drives cloud spend, yet 91% still can't optimize it effectively. After years of adoption, most organizations have moved past discovery. They know container sprawl, idle resources and reactive scaling inflate costs. What they don't know is how to fix it ...

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Artificial intelligence is no longer a future investment. It's already embedded in how we work — whether through copilots in productivity apps, real-time transcription tools in meetings, or machine learning models fueling analytics and personalization. But while enterprise adoption accelerates, there's one critical area many leaders have yet to examine: Can your network actually support AI at the speed your users expect? ...

Keeping Your Business Stable When Going Through an IT Disaster

The more technology businesses invest in, the more potential attack surfaces they have that can be exploited. Without the right continuity plans in place, the disruptions caused by these attacks can bring operations to a standstill and cause irreparable damage to an organization. It's essential to take the time now to ensure your business has the right tools, processes, and recovery initiatives in place to weather any type of IT disaster that comes up. Here are some effective strategies you can follow to achieve this ...

How Engineers Can Use AIOps to Innovate Their Infrastructure

In today's fast-paced AI landscape, CIOs, IT leaders, and engineers are constantly challenged to manage increasingly complex and interconnected systems. The sheer scale and velocity of data generated by modern infrastructure can be overwhelming, making it difficult to maintain uptime, prevent outages, and create a seamless customer experience. This complexity is magnified by the industry's shift towards agentic AI ...

MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Podcast - Episode 19: The AWS Outage

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 19, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA explains the cause of the AWS outage in October ... 

Cloud Migration Delays Are Putting Businesses at Risk

The explosion of generative AI and machine learning capabilities has fundamentally changed the conversation around cloud migration. It's no longer just about modernization or cost savings — it's about being able to compete in a market where AI is rapidly becoming table stakes. Companies that can't quickly spin up AI workloads, feed models with data at scale, or experiment with new capabilities are falling behind faster than ever before. But here's what I'm seeing: many organizations want to capitalize on AI, but they're stuck ...

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On September 16, the world celebrated the 10th annual IT Pro Day, giving companies a chance to laud the professionals who serve as the backbone to almost every successful business across the globe. Despite the growing importance of their roles, many IT pros still work in the background and often go underappreciated ...

The Two-Way Relationship Between AI and Observability

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping observability, and observability is becoming essential for AI. This is a two-way relationship that is increasingly relevant as enterprises scale generative AI ... This dual role makes AI and observability inseparable. In this blog, I cover more details of each side ...

Unrelenting IT Issues Cost Millions of Hours in Lost Productivity

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