Whether proactive or reactive in nature, war room sessions fundamentally come down to problem solving. But the ultimate goal is to eliminate these sessions altogether.
Start with How to Prepare for Your Next Network War Room Debate - Part 1
However, sometimes problems still happen no matter how proactive you are. If you have to go to the war room, and you want to win, here are some key tips:
Populate the room wisely and sparingly
The old adage about the bigger the group, the less work gets done certainly holds true for the war room. You want all critical functions represented, but with a single representative. If someone needs access to their teams for more details, they should report back, not drag more participants into the meetings.
Define roles and responsibilities
Clearly define roles and responsibilities for the war room. In most cases, the primary responsibility is to develop a comprehensive proposal to present to executive management. When done well, the execs shouldn't even need to participate. The right team should be able to deliver a rock-solid proposal, regardless of whether the driving force is project-focused or response-focused.
Bring data
Bring all the data you have and be prepared to share it. There are no secrets in the war room. All corporate politics must be put aside for a successful resolution. Remove blinders regarding available data. For example, when dealing with a security issue, don't forget to involve the network team. They often have critical data that's overlooked, at least in the beginning of the situational analysis.
Know the end game
Have an idea of the ultimate win-win outcome before you enter the war room. This is probably easier when the situation is project-focused vs. response-focused, but it's critical either way.
Involve PR experts
Involve PR experts for events that will impact the external perception of the brand. This is extremely important when dealing with response-focused issues, especially security breaches. External communication is a legal requirement for security breaches, and you need to get it right. It's the responsibility of the entire team to craft an accurate and complete response, but it's best for all communication to funnel through a single PR representative.
Plan to communicate only once
Analyze ALL the data and get the full extent of the problem isolated as early as possible. Communicate as clearly as you can. A great example of what not to do would be the Equifax breach, where the initial breach announcement was made approximately 6 weeks after discovery, with news of ever-greater exposure continuing to be reported by Equifax for more than 6 months.
War rooms can be intimidating places with lots of finger pointing, blame and chaos. For the network team, having the proper visibility tools in place is a win-win. First, it helps reduce these sessions, and second, if called in to answer the bell, it gives you the data needed to properly contribute and help solve the problem quickly. When the fingers start pointing, will you be ready?
The Latest
The 2024 State of the Data Center Report from CoreSite shows that although C-suite confidence in the economy remains high, a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment has many business leaders proceeding with caution when it comes to their IT and data ecosystems, with an emphasis on cost control and predictability, flexibility and risk management ...
In June, New Relic published the State of Observability for Energy and Utilities Report to share insights, analysis, and data on the impact of full-stack observability software in energy and utilities organizations' service capabilities. Here are eight key takeaways from the report ...
The rapid rise of generative AI (GenAI) has caught everyone's attention, leaving many to wonder if the technology's impact will live up to the immense hype. A recent survey by Alteryx provides valuable insights into the current state of GenAI adoption, revealing a shift from inflated expectations to tangible value realization across enterprises ... Here are five key takeaways that underscore GenAI's progression from hype to real-world impact ...
As software development grows more intricate, the challenge for observability engineers tasked with ensuring optimal system performance becomes more daunting. Current methodologies are struggling to keep pace, with the annual Observability Pulse surveys indicating a rise in Mean Time to Remediation (MTTR). According to this survey, only a small fraction of organizations, around 10%, achieve full observability today. Generative AI, however, promises to significantly move the needle ...
While nearly all data leaders surveyed are building generative AI applications, most don't believe their data estate is actually prepared to support them, according to the State of Reliable AI report from Monte Carlo Data ...
Enterprises are putting a lot of effort into improving the digital employee experience (DEX), which has become essential to both improving organizational performance and attracting and retaining talented workers. But to date, most efforts to deliver outstanding DEX have focused on people working with laptops, PCs, or thin clients. Employees on the frontlines, using mobile devices to handle logistics ... have been largely overlooked ...
The average customer-facing incident takes nearly three hours to resolve (175 minutes) while the estimated cost of downtime is $4,537 per minute, meaning each incident can cost nearly $794,000, according to new research from PagerDuty ...
In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 8, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses AutoCon with the conference founders Scott Robohn and Chris Grundemann ...
Numerous vendors and service providers have recently embraced the NaaS concept, yet there is still no industry consensus on its definition or the types of networks it involves. Furthermore, providers have varied in how they define the NaaS service delivery model. I conducted research for a new report, Network as a Service: Understanding the Cloud Consumption Model in Networking, to refine the concept of NaaS and reduce buyer confusion over what it is and how it can offer value ...
