War rooms can be noisy or surgical. The difference is structure. Here’s the format I use for go-lives, migrations, and major releases.
Roles in the room
- Commander (decision lead), scribe/timekeeper, workstream leads (app, data, infra, business), vendor lead, incident manager if production risk exists.
Cadence and rules
- Stand up schedule: checkpoints every 60–90 minutes; shorter during high-risk steps.
- Single channel for updates; no side threads that hide issues.
- Status calls: facts only (step, result, elapsed, blockers, ETA).
Visibility
- Live runbook with steps, owners, start/end times, and evidence links.
- Board of risks/issues with owners and next actions; track trend.
- Clear Go/No-Go criteria; decision time pre-scheduled.
Escalations
- If a step slips beyond tolerance, escalate within 15 minutes.
- Pre-identified rollback triggers and who can call them.
- Vendor response expectations in writing (SLA, path to engineers).
After action
- Capture timeline, decisions, deviations, and follow-up actions before closing the room.
- First post-cutover review within 48 hours; log lessons into playbook.
Calm war rooms aren’t lucky—they’re planned. Define roles, cadence, and escalations before you start, and your team will deliver under pressure.