The WDS Dev war room

The WDS Dev War Room

The dissemination of information at the appropriate time and in particular having all that information to hand when planning is important in many walks of life. If you are developing software or trying to win a war against the Germans that requirement isn’t any different. We wanted to change our room which we do our planning in to a ‘hub’ where all the required information is there for anyone who needs it.

I therefore thought a trip the Churchill War Rooms (link) in London might give us some inspiration for our ‘war room’

While there I noticed some things that affected our decisions:

• They had information about the competition. This seemed like a good idea so we now have competitor analysis
  
• They had differing levels of information. We therefore thought having our mid term aims and short term aims/estimates would be a good
  
• They had a segregated room for this discussion but also boards which people would meet at for discussion. We keep our dates on this wall too so they are always visible
  
• While sat down you can see all of the information. Font size etc needs to be appropriate
  

So, our first iteration involved moving notice boards so out ‘epic mapping’ boards were in the room we used for planning. We can project either onto the whiteboard at the other end of the room but we also arranged a mobile projector screen so we still project onto that if the board is required during the session. Finally we tried to improve our competitor analysis and add information in this area to the walls

We did have a challenge when first implementing this in that our room we chose was often booked out. We there for ensured that all of our planning sessions are a recurring meeting (which has other benefits)

I should also mention that myself and the other leads had done some prior reading of facebook, google etc doing similar things and so we could have achieved a lot of this without the visit. Was an interesting experience anyway

I hope this helps. Feel free to comment, share and discuss

Chris Watkins