Virtual War Rooms

Author: Marcus Randrup

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Abstract

This article aims at providing insights into what a war room is in a project management related context, how to properly construct one, and an introduction to how Virtual War Rooms can be implemented and utilized. Virtual War Rooms refer to the digitalization of war rooms. The details and information presented are greatly based on the works of C.W. Getz, Mika P. Nieminen, Mari Tyllinen, Mikael Runonen, Willem Standaert, Steve Muyelle, and Amit Basu. The specific journals and papers issued from these authors can be found in the References at the end of this article. This article is produced as a part of the course 42433 – Advanced Engineering Project, Program and Portfolio Management E22 at the Danish Technical University (DTU). Introduction: A war room is typically a well-equipped and well-designed meeting room to help the company plan their strategy, share information between all project teams and departments, and provide a specific space for collaboration.

• War Room Developement: Typically used during times of war, war rooms proved to be an effective tool in planning effective strategies and creating an organized environment to operate in.
• War Room Characteristics: C.W. Getz outlines the seven main aspects of creating an effective war room environment. Specifically, these are: Control Room, Master Program Records, Program Management Representatives, Management Policy Committee, Staff Review Meetings, Publications, and Set Procedures within the company.
• Virtual War Rooms: These war rooms implement the concepts, tools, and methods used for online meetings and make effective adaptations to better serve the purposes of the war rooms. You have increased learning, greater motivation, and better coordination between the team, however prolonged meetings and big groups lead to a few issues of demotivation and ineffectiveness.

Introduction to Managerial War Rooms

some random info i guess regarding the topic.

Annotated Bibliography

For the detailed description of all of the different aspects and building blocks of a good war room, read the following exert from the author's (C.W. Getz) book. It goes through the seven basic elements in great detail, as well as providing examples of how war rooms were used in some of the major projects around the world.

This excerpt specifically defines how a virtual war room should look. they talk about the specific requirements for Collocated Group Work Spaces, such as project war rooms. It is from a book that three authors have collaborated on, and it gives really good insights and pointers to how an effective digital working space should look and be structured. This is becoming evermore relevant as we are in a more digitalized world, and we need to make use of the technology around us in a meaningful and beneficial way. The main example and direction they guide their article in is skewed towards a collocated 'Design' team.

A few of the other documents can be used to further read up on what exactly project war rooms are, as well as a few documents describing how online and physical meetings can be used for different objectives. Although it might not be too relevant for this article, it was interesting to see if online war rooms could be useful, but there are still a lot of drawbacks to these and currently it seems to be impractical. War Rooms function best in person, using up-to-date technology and software.