Do you need a War Room to be battle ready?

In one of the companies that I worked in, there was a large, 18-seat room in our office which was always reserved for Marketing. We called it the War Room. It wasn't where we sat everyday, but it was reserved for special occasions.

And special occasions meant crunch time.

When we had a large project like an event, a customer visit or a website refresh, where almost all members of the team were involved, we were led into the War room. We sat there the entire day, ate our lunch there, and had our evening teas there. We had crazy deadlines to meet and needed extreme collaboration and quick turn around times.

At first, I resented it - I had no privacy, we were in the presence of our manager all the time, and well, being a millennial, it was too much time being spent with my team!

But 10 years into my career, I understand the need for a War Room. I've worked in various types of teams - fully virtual teams, partially virtual teams and local teams. But my best work has been in a War room scenario for projects where collaboration is key and quick decisions need to be made.

Lately, I've rarely come across the concept of a War Room being used for project delivery and project management. Which is surprising, because, for large projects that have tight deadlines the best way to deliver is in a War Room.

My collaboration experience came in handy a few months ago when we had a large project to deliver. The project had tight deadlines and dependencies within the team. Working in an organization that takes prides in supporting flexible work timings and work from home policies, I decided to get all my team members into a virtual War Room - a skype meeting room. People dropped in and out of the room, to attend other pre-scheduled meetings or tend to personal matters, but we were all connected and it worked wonders. We regrouped once in 2 hours for a quick status check and during the status check each member of the team was expected to log back in if they had dropped off.

 
So do you need a War Room to be battle ready? Yes, you do.

But what your War Room looks like would depend on your organization. If you work for an organization where everyone comes into the office everyday then a physical structure works best. In fact, I would suggest having a space earmarked for the purpose of collaboration - one with large windows, if possible.

If you work in an organization with flexible work arrangements, then investing in a virtual meeting tool with voice over internet calling capability (avoid an audio bridge; dialing into a bridge for long periods of time may put a dent in your IT budget) may be your best bet.