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From the same people who brought us "ask" as a noun comes a new idiom that I haven't heard of before: to "walk the wall."

I haven't heard this myself, but my sister (who is an IT consultant) asked me what it means, which means that I will likely be subjected to this very soon as well.

My speculative guess is that it means to try to get an idea of the scope of a problem by "walking" around it at a high level, but I have no idea as I haven't heard it in context.

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    Are you sure it might not have been walk the walk?
    – Jon Hanna
    Feb 6, 2013 at 17:39
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    In what context has she heard it? I would guess it is akin to "walking the perimeter," which refers to patrolling territorial boundaries and can be used in an IT security context.
    – Kit Z. Fox ♦
    Feb 6, 2013 at 17:43
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    hmmm. Urban dictionary has an interesting definition for "walk the wall". What has your research borne out, @fluffy?
    – Kristina Lopez
    Feb 6, 2013 at 18:24
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    @Jon: The first couple of instances here seem to be for OP's usage (which I'd never heard of before).
    – FumbleFingers
    Feb 6, 2013 at 18:25
  • @FumbleFingers I think you may well have the answer.
    – Jon Hanna
    Feb 6, 2013 at 19:52

4 Answers 4

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"Walk the Wall" can refer to a kind of Stand-Up meeting in which the group goes through each item of work in their "wall" and talks about its progress.

http://fabiopereira.me/blog/2011/02/28/walk-the-wall-stand-up-meeting/

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  • Looks good to me. Wallboard, wall chart, flipchart, story board, status board are standard terminology in the management "show and tell" game, and the guy who has to stand up and explain what it all means is as likely to walk through it as talk it through.
    – FumbleFingers
    Feb 6, 2013 at 18:47
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    My sister got a partial answer from some of her clients that it was "essentially a deep dive on process flow." I'm not sure that definition quite matches up with yours. But who knows what any of this management-speak lingo means anymore.
    – fluffy
    Feb 6, 2013 at 22:32
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    What does this mean? : "essentially a deep dive on process flow."
    – Relaxing In Cyprus
    Feb 7, 2013 at 0:03
  • @FacebookAnswers Exactly!
    – fluffy
    May 28, 2013 at 16:35
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Walk the wall is a military term for "guard a border, watch those on the outside, keep those on the inside safe".

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Walk the wall is used by various consultants for reviewing internal ops/workflow/org structures. Each leaders has assigned workflow and review it all during a "walk the wall" session - literally walking thru the workflow.

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You've misheard the phrase ;it is " walk the walk " .It is used to show approval and it means to actually do something rather than just talking about it, so that people can see you really are good at it.

For example :

Children really do listen to their parents, especially if the parents walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/walk-the-walk

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  • I have not misheard anything, and I verified with my sister (who was asking the question of me) that she did not mishear this either. See the comments on the OP.
    – fluffy
    Dec 21, 2017 at 19:35

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