Technology isn’t the panacea for everything. It’s not even a panacea for all of our project management needs.

Recently, I was visiting a customer. As usual, I started by discussing with their VP of professional services how they use our software for cost tracking, billing and project management. But what he showed me next was truly an eye opener — he took me to his “War Room.”  A traditional conference room had been transformed into the “battle bridge.” Whiteboards covered every wall. A couple of flip charts were placed at each corner with all kinds of “action item,” diagrams, and notes scribbled on them. In the center part of the room, a projector was connected to a computer running Tenrox software, displaying reports of live project financial data. This was the only “hi-tech” aspect of the war room!

What I discovered from the war room is that we’ve become too enamored with technology. Even with the best software systems in place, managers and team members can’t get a bird’s eye view of everything that’s going on. And project contributors don’t fully comprehend the consequences when they are late with their deliverables.

A few weeks after the trip we built our own war rooms at Tenrox, one for the services team and one for R&D. We bought special whiteboard wallpaper and put all of our key projects on them. Best of all, we put the project owners on them too. All of the projects have color-coded indicators, with late projects getting red stickies. It turns out project owners don’t particularly like seeing yellow or red beside their names.

Team members meet here and go over project status. The key here is that the room is for high-level conversations. The boards, if you will, are the war plan. The projects on them are the individual battles. The live reports are like a general “drilling” to get more detail about a specific battle. Imagine one battle being lost — perhaps a project that’s late — and you can imagine the visual and mental context such an environment presents.

Now imagine all of these projects in an Excel spreadsheet, or in a software application, with ETAs being altered by changing a cell on the project manager’s monitor. Not the same impact, is it?

I recently ran across one company that has taken the war room to a whole new next level. The company, Belgium-based Cockpit Group, (http://www.cockpit-group.com/en/index.html) has organized an entire design business around its “Management Cockpit” concept.  This so-called cockpit, developed by neurologists, human intelligence scientists and computer engineers, “translates strategy into operational terms” through an ergonomic presentation with four walls of goal-oriented visuals.

The visuals are designed to meet the support needs of senior execs. During meetings, only the visuals needed for the particular projects on hand are presented. It’s kind of a targeted version of our war room.

In one corner of a cockpit is the “flight deck,” a six-screen computer that powers the entire room. On the screen are training and checklists that help a management team conduct more efficient meetings and to make decisions faster, the company says.

For one client, ice cream manufacturer Iglo-Ola, the flight deck — the black wall — depicts the main key performance indicators. On the red wall, there is information on the company’s market and customers. On the white wall are important projects. And on the blue, internal resources.

Certainly not every company needs such an elaborate system. Our low-tech war rooms have done wonders for our projects. The accountability, big-picture thinking and transparency this has created is simply incredible. Suddenly, our project managers, contributors and vice presidents (generals) seem to be better aligned and more in tune with where we stand on all of our key initiatives. I will report back to you in a few months with more feedback on how much the war room approach has impacted our project delivery.