As I’ve worked with different teams and companies, I’ve noticed that the way meetings are scheduled can have an impact on my productivity. Here’s some different setups I’ve experienced:
- Daily standups
- Weekly standups
- Weekly customer meetings
- As few meetings as possible
- And more!
What approaches to meetings have you experienced? Which have allowed to perform at your best?
Top comments (4)
In my first software job, I had weekly progress meeting where I had to demo the new improvements to management or clients.
While this motivated me to work hard and have something to show for my work, it made it really tempting to accrue technical debt, especially on the backend.
At another job, leadership was strongly opposed to regularly scheduled meetings, insisting they were a waste of time. While this may have been true for them, it made it more difficult as a new employee to seek help and understand what other people were working on and how my tasks fit into the bigger picture.
At my current job, I have daily standups where I report my progress and any blockers. It's a quick meeting (usually under 15 minutes) and seems to strike a good balance. Gives me a daily deadline of feeling like I need to have something to report, but doesn't have the added pressure of giving a demo.
What has your experience been like?
For me, I tend to do better when there is a long list of tasks, and the team communicates whenever necessary. In my experience, too many meetings either lead to wasted time or overly important meetings which spawn compulsive note-takers. IMO if average employees are routinely taking notes, run! It's probably a sign you're working with mini-bosses or vermin.
Async daily standup + bi-weekly department sync + expectations of 1-2 quick syncs per week as necessary.
Ultimately this winds up being a low-meeting week, but by allowing for a couple syncs scheduled as needed, it reduces the likelihood of having big long meetings which need to cover all possible things that could come up in the next two weeks.
I've been hearing more lately about other companies using async standups. Do you think they're as effective as synchronous ones?