The Cost of Meetings

Meetings ... love them or hate them they are a part of everyday business life. I've had multiple bosses that detested meetings, saw them as a waste of time, and would dissuade us from having them. On the other end of the spectrum I've worked for organizations that had countless meeting, many that were of little relevance to me, and left little time in the day to accomplish my other duties. In this posting I aim to examine the cost and benefits of meetings, and also touch upon what it takes to have effective meetings.

As someone that has worked as a software developer, team leader, and manager of developers over the years, I'd like to think that I've seen the good and bad side of meetings. Let's start first with the cost. Everyone would agree that a 1 hour meeting requires at least an hours worth of time for everyone that attends. Add to that the need to break ones focus from what they were doing, and regaining that focus after the meeting, you may even raise that to one and a half hours. If you want to be conservative, you might even extend it to two hours. In a given day, which typically consists 8 hours, you definitely don't want to waste 12%-25% of someone's day on something that's not productive. Add more ineffective meetings in a day, and you see how quickly it can take away from someone's ability to produce. Needless to say it serves nobody when meetings aren't productive, and in fact they can be costly.

Now let's look at why we have meetings in the first place. Obviously the person scheduling the meeting see's some sort of value in it. Either that or they just like to hear them self talk. Assuming that everyone attending the meeting is working on the same project, it's often valuable to help ensure that everyone understands what team's goals are and how best to achieve them. While the cost of not having meetings is harder to measure objectively, there's still a potential cost. Let's assume that a team of developers, QA, etc are "too busy" for meetings, and instead there are no meeting scheduled  for a week. While it's possible that every individual  on the team proactively ask questions, seeks feedback from others, and in general stays in frequently communication with the entire group, this tends to be even less likely when they are feeling the pressure due to pressure and time constraints.

While it definitely varies, all too often I've seen teams that end up having to redo work due to lack of communication,  inconsistencies in implementations, and a general lack of understanding of core requirements. Worse yet, I've seen things get pushed through, instead of being reworked, due to a lack of time to go back and fix things. In a worse case scenario the effort of the entire team might have to been for naught. Even in an more ideal scenario, some amount time is still lost due to  lack of communication, that could have been easily resolved with one or more meetings. If you want to risk a few hours a meetings a week against a poorly implemented project, then by all means go ahead and don't schedule meetings.

As I write this I can just imagine some of my old managers thinking "Instead of meeting, you can just send emails." Let me shoot this down right away. Email is ok for simple communications, when basic information needs to be conveyed. Much is lost when going from verbal to written communication. Now add 5 different people to an email chain, and emails with any sort of real discussion quickly get out of hand. Add to that, that we are already bombarded with so many emails in a day, those email often end up ignored or read over very quickly.

Hopefully I've illustrated the cost of not having meetings. Of course meetings by themselves have no value. Meetings have to be done right in order for them to provide that value. Here are a few tips one how to help ensure that you're meetings are helping:

• Have an agenda. This should go without saying, but make sure that there's a well defined objective to having the meeting. While the meeting itself can be informal, and your objective can be very general, don't have the meeting just for the sake of having a meeting.
• Involve everyone in the meeting. If there's one person talking, and everyone else is just listening, they are much less likely to pay attention. Solicit the input of others, even the one's that look like they don't want to talk. Most of the time people have an opinion and will share it if asked. More importantly the group usually benefits when ideas are shared and collaboration occurs. Keep people involved and you'll have much better results.
• Don't over-schedule. There's no simple rule to determine the right balance, but I've found that typically 2 one hour meetings a week, per project is enough. It ensures that communication is occurring, but that there's not too much time spent in meetings either. If the need arises to schedule additional unplanned meetings, by all means schedule them. Sometimes the need arises, and a mass email chain just doesn't do the job.
• Know you team. Some teams need a little more guidance then others. Some are very comfortable and are great at speaking their mind and sharing ideas. Others aren't, and require a little bit more guidance. Do what works best for your group. If you're not entirely sure what people think of the meetings, don't hesitate to ask team members directly for input on the meetings. Even if they aren't brutally honest, you'll get a sense how they value them. Having said that, even if they aren't thrilled with the meetings because they would rather be doing other things such as coding, you still need to have them.

While these concepts seem simple enough, you might be surprised how many times people get this wrong when leading projects. People wonder why software projects often fail. The reasons are many, but the solutions to those problems often start with proper communication.