The Collaborative Project Work Space

October 28, 2000

The following is the second of a series of three articles describing the "ideal" project work space. The first article describes it from a general sense, the second describes an actual project workspace (physical), and the third article describes the virtual work space as it should be.

The Collaborative Project Work Space

The Physical Project Room (PPR) Part 2

In most IT projects it is necessary for the workers to come together, even more so an architecture project!

In most successful cases, the core architecture project team "lived" in a project room.

The following article describes one such project or war room.

Core staffing for this project ranged from 6 to 9 people.

Definition - Physical Project Room

"A gathering place for a group of people to develop or refine a solution to a significant problem in a short time frame."

Physical Requirements

  • Room size 50 sq ft per person (300 sq feet for example project)
  • Minimum windows (needed the wall space)
  • Multiple phone connections
  • Network connections for the core staff plus 50% (12 in example project case)
  • Two sets of computer desks (work areas), two sets of tables (conferencing, and layout)
  • Wall space for posting charts, project plans, projection on the wall.
  • Four flip chart tripods (two portable for meetings) and associated paper (with grids)
  • Lockable cabinet for software, critical and confidential information.
  • Book shelves (4 or 5 feet tall) for research and background material.
  • The four footers are best as then you can use the wall space above them easily.
  • One wall mounted white board
  • Lights that can be dimmed (for presentations)
  • Ergo metric chairs for the core staff.

Required Equipment

  • Two telephones (one with conference call capability)
  • One portable, printing white board
  • LCD projector for presentations
  • Desktop Computers (network capable) for core team (with CD's)
  • Laptop Computer (can replace one of the desktops)
  • Monitors (19 inch minimum)
  • High-speed b/w printer
  • Color printer
  • B/W scanner

Required software

  • Operating system that can share resources with the server
  • Project Management *
  • Web authoring *
  • Word Processing
  • Spreadsheet
  • Presentation
  • Browser (MS and Netscape)
  • Data Base *

Network Requirements

  • Connection to the Internet
  • Connection to Intranet
  • Connection to e-mail system
  • Connection to production server providing local print and project area space with file sharing
  • Secure logon and email ID for staff (read /write with limited delete ability)
  • Common project email ID
  • Intranet authoring authorities.

Comfort Items

  • Coffee Pot
  • Microwave
  • Refrigerator
  • Portable items from above list to have carrying cases
  • Cart or dolly for transporting items

In the third of these three articles, we will describe a logical workspace that might be used as an Architectural virtual project area. A copy of this article, previous and the subsequent articles will be placed in the Tools part of the Enterprise-Wide IT Architecture (EWITA) web site, located at http://www.ewita.com.

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