No more war rooms...

My good friend Darrell Snow recently blogged about his dislike of the term “war room.”  I couldn’t agree more.  I usually use either “team room” or “collaborative space.”  But, I agree with Darrell there, too.  They both lack pizazz.

Here are a few alternate suggestions:

What about working in “the den?” – It’s short which is good.  And, it has a positive, relaxed connotation.  But, perhaps it implies too much relaxation.  (And, for some reason, it makes me think of Ward Cleaver.  I don’t know what that’s about!) 

How about joining us in “the collaboration station?” – It’s long, but the aliteration works.  Unfortunately, it sounds to my ear more like a joint space venture with the Russians than an team room.  It might actually work as a way to describe a pair-programming workstation.

Or, maybe we could borrow something from sports: there’s the general “playing field,” or from baseball, “the diamond,” or from soccer & rugby, “the pitch.”  These are all places where people go to work hard toward a common goal.  They’re short.  And, the latter has the advantage of being almost globally understood.  (Plus, it works well with Scrum!)

Of course, you can always do what we did at patterns & practices:  we named our space “intergallactic headquarters!”

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 10, 2005
  Over here at Aviarc we call it the "Playpen".
• Anonymous
  October 11, 2005
  I always kind of liked "War Room". That way you could put an XBox in there and nobody will question the yelling and screaming...or even the gunshot sounds as you play 4 player Halo.
• Anonymous
  October 11, 2005
  Not that I have much experience in this area, but I believe I would prefer the grunts and screams of a sports field to those of a battle field. As for the XBox, every office should have at least one!