January 24, 2017 at 9:33 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The War Room
January 25, 2017 at 1:03 am
The client I currently work for has a similar strategy in only having one person from each area but they have advanced it one step further, in my opinion, in that they have recognised that there are roles that can be grouped together. They do this by having a manager from each area (IT, Customer Services etc.) who represent the roles and make plans as well as agree priorities and focus. This keeps the technical and front line staff etc. to their roles and out of discussions that their input is often one way. If needs be any number of the single representatives for an area (e.g. a DBA, a network engineer, a lead developer) can be called in for focussed discussion. This way less time is wasted.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
January 25, 2017 at 10:59 am
Yes, you don't need an "all hands" meeting every time a deployment fails or something goes bump in the night, especially when such things are a weekly or even daily occurrence. It's best to start with a small task force of designated subject area experts, perhaps whomever from each area happens to be on-call at the time, and then spiral outward depending on how complex the problem reveals itself to be.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
May 6, 2017 at 11:41 am
My idea of this is tht it's best to have one person who has a good understanding of the stuff which is broken look at thing first, provided you have a competent person who is can cover enough of the area to give that task to (if all your people are over-specialised, you have a problem). That person can see roughly where the root of the problem lies and pull in the right specialists to determine what to do next. The same person can report on prevent the specialists from going to war with each other and provide reports on how they are progressing on devising and implementing the solution, which may have both short term (to minimise damage) and longer term (to prevent repeats) components.
Tom
May 6, 2017 at 2:55 pm
There's a team at work that takes the "all hands on deck" approach for nearly everything. It consumes lots of time and things get done very slowly. I prefer a more focused approach, much like Eric said. Bring in other people as needed.
May 8, 2017 at 9:50 am
TomThomson - Saturday, May 6, 2017 11:41 AMMy idea of this is tht it's best to have one person who has a good understanding of the stuff which is broken look at thing first, provided you have a competent person who is can cover enough of the area to give that task to (if all your people are over-specialised, you have a problem). That person can see roughly where the root of the problem lies and pull in the right specialists to determine what to do next. The same person canreport onprevent the specialists from going to war with each other and provide reports on how they are progressing on devising and implementing the solution, which may have both short term (to minimise damage) and longer term (to prevent repeats) components.
Can be hard to find in many organizations. Not always because of technical deficiencies, but because of politics and power.
May 9, 2017 at 7:18 am
I prefer the war room when there are professional people involved. I have suffered when some admins get into the wrong mindset. Instead of trying the fix agreed in the meeting and then reporting, they descended into "that didn't work it must now be X, Oh that didn't work, lets try Y..... " before they reported back in to the war room. It extended the troubleshooting by hours and the no one really knows what the fix actually is.
I have also worked in companies that the term war room has been used and has excluded the people who were the only technical staff who actually new what the problem was. Of course that extended the issue by weeks with the client nearly pulling the plug. Not really a war room, more like a gathering of the vain glorious :Whistling:
Now a days I tend to see who is in the "war" room before I hold a glimmer of hope.
May 10, 2017 at 12:57 pm
Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Monday, May 8, 2017 9:50 AMTomThomson - Saturday, May 6, 2017 11:41 AMMy idea of this is tht it's best to have one person who has a good understanding of the stuff which is broken look at thing first, provided you have a competent person who is can cover enough of the area to give that task to (if all your people are over-specialised, you have a problem). That person can see roughly where the root of the problem lies and pull in the right specialists to determine what to do next. The same person canreport onprevent the specialists from going to war with each other and provide reports on how they are progressing on devising and implementing the solution, which may have both short term (to minimise damage) and longer term (to prevent repeats) components.Can be hard to find in many organizations. Not always because of technical deficiencies, but because of politics and power.
As soon as politics and power are allowed to mess up disaster recovery, the cost of teh problem increases tenfold. Allowing them to screw up the warroom on less extreme problems is probably even worse.
Tom
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