There’s a lot of meeting hate here and as a developer, I used to feel the same.
But after bootstrapping a SaaS company and at times struggling through cross-team execution, I’ve come around. A short weekly standing meeting, like the one described in the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution, is actually a powerful tool.
Without it, maintenance, admin, and firefighting will expand to fill the entire week. The meeting forces space for focus, clear commitments, and basic accountability.
It’s not obvious early in your career, but once you’ve got some scars, it starts to make a lot more sense.
> Without it, maintenance, admin, and firefighting will expand to fill the entire week. The meeting forces space for focus, clear commitments, and basic accountability.
Author here. You said it better than I did in the post.
These types of meetings only work if the person who organized it has organizational power over the other participants. In my experience, these types of meetings always get deferred or cancelled if all participants are of the same level or worse, the organizer has less organizational power than the participants.
A progress meeting by a junior PM with a bunch of senior+ engineer is _guaranteed_ to get cancelled or gutted very quickly.
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In the vein of other comments though: agree. The necessity of these types of meetings is an organizational stink and the problem lies with priorities and amount of work to be done.
If something really needs to be done, time and resources will be found for it.
There are the status updates that it's often good for people to know about even if only in a half-listening and simultaneously replying to emails sense. They're at least aware in a way that they wouldn't if they didn't read the memo.
There are decisions that really just need to be made, even if not critical, so they don't get strung out.
And there are meetings that don't require a decision today but do have a timeline and need at least a plan for a plan.
Organizational power comes in various forms. If an executive cares about the project and believes the junior PM is capable of running it, then that can be all the "power" that the PM needs to herd more senior engineers. If the engineers really have that much of a problem with it, they can go complain and be promptly told to stop complaining and get back to doing their job, i.e., contributing to the project.
"It’s easy for long-term strategic, high-impact work to sink to the bottom of everyone’s todo list."
"[...] But one where the tasks to accomplish the project are not anyone’s full-time job."
Sounds like the organization's leadership are incapable of balancing short term and long term goals, and it's falling to people who are paid less to "step up" and try to swim against the current for the good of the company.
or
Whatever the author is talking about is some engineering pipe dream disconnected from actual business value, and someone is dragging a bunch of other people semi-willingly along trying to execute on it without a mandate/funding from leadership.
Impossible to say which from the outside. But I've known several instances of both cases.
Meetings are one type of forcing function. Anything with concrete, time-bound deliverables is a forcing function, too. In a well-managed organization with trained & competent staff, it should not require meetings to ensure progress.
Some meetings, especially one on one, can be useful. It's very hard to say no to someone you've met, especially when your only other interaction is over the phone, email or chat.
Recurring meetings, especially at the developer level, are a waste of developer time.
I always found it easier to walk around, get personal updates one on one and integrate the information.
That way I wasted only a few minutes of each developer's time, instead of boring them all for an hour per week.
What other forcing functions is everyone using? (externally-imposed like meetings, or self-imposed)
I don't use forcing functions enough, which may imply missed opportunities to trade slightly higher-stress and increased busywork for greater productivity.
I’m so much more of a quick huddle/sync up rather than a meeting with 10 people who each speak (in the best case) 10% of the time. Having standing meetings for war and feasting (war being sprint planning, feasting being retro/demo) is essential. Standup/status meetings are largely a bane if they last more than 10m
To get the mathematical analogy back off track, some meeting series are "off-resonance" and result in lower amplitude. I'd have titled this "Weekly Meetings are Motivational".
100% agree that there are more and less valuable meetings. Agendas and todo checkins are signals of worthwhile meetings. And having a meeting end or change is a good sign too.
No way, this is terrible! There are so many great work tracking tools to use or more efficient ways to communicate that accomplish the same thing. Without making a bunch of people take time out of their day so you can ask them if they remembered to do part of their job. Good management creates systems so this kind of thing isn’t needed.
"A recurring meeting serves as a powerful forcing function for long-running projects."
No it doesn't. It serves as a burden ball that gets kicked around on the calendar field once the value of the series has been tapped out but no one wants to cancel it.
There’s a lot of meeting hate here and as a developer, I used to feel the same.
But after bootstrapping a SaaS company and at times struggling through cross-team execution, I’ve come around. A short weekly standing meeting, like the one described in the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution, is actually a powerful tool.
Without it, maintenance, admin, and firefighting will expand to fill the entire week. The meeting forces space for focus, clear commitments, and basic accountability.
It’s not obvious early in your career, but once you’ve got some scars, it starts to make a lot more sense.
> Without it, maintenance, admin, and firefighting will expand to fill the entire week. The meeting forces space for focus, clear commitments, and basic accountability.
Author here. You said it better than I did in the post.
It's really about creating space!
Disagree to a degree.
These types of meetings only work if the person who organized it has organizational power over the other participants. In my experience, these types of meetings always get deferred or cancelled if all participants are of the same level or worse, the organizer has less organizational power than the participants.
A progress meeting by a junior PM with a bunch of senior+ engineer is _guaranteed_ to get cancelled or gutted very quickly.
---
In the vein of other comments though: agree. The necessity of these types of meetings is an organizational stink and the problem lies with priorities and amount of work to be done.
If something really needs to be done, time and resources will be found for it.
There are multiple kinds of meetings.
There are the status updates that it's often good for people to know about even if only in a half-listening and simultaneously replying to emails sense. They're at least aware in a way that they wouldn't if they didn't read the memo.
There are decisions that really just need to be made, even if not critical, so they don't get strung out.
And there are meetings that don't require a decision today but do have a timeline and need at least a plan for a plan.
Organizational power comes in various forms. If an executive cares about the project and believes the junior PM is capable of running it, then that can be all the "power" that the PM needs to herd more senior engineers. If the engineers really have that much of a problem with it, they can go complain and be promptly told to stop complaining and get back to doing their job, i.e., contributing to the project.
"It’s easy for long-term strategic, high-impact work to sink to the bottom of everyone’s todo list."
"[...] But one where the tasks to accomplish the project are not anyone’s full-time job."
Sounds like the organization's leadership are incapable of balancing short term and long term goals, and it's falling to people who are paid less to "step up" and try to swim against the current for the good of the company.
or
Whatever the author is talking about is some engineering pipe dream disconnected from actual business value, and someone is dragging a bunch of other people semi-willingly along trying to execute on it without a mandate/funding from leadership.
Impossible to say which from the outside. But I've known several instances of both cases.
From my experience the first scenario is the norm
Meetings are one type of forcing function. Anything with concrete, time-bound deliverables is a forcing function, too. In a well-managed organization with trained & competent staff, it should not require meetings to ensure progress.
Some meetings, especially one on one, can be useful. It's very hard to say no to someone you've met, especially when your only other interaction is over the phone, email or chat.
Recurring meetings, especially at the developer level, are a waste of developer time.
I always found it easier to walk around, get personal updates one on one and integrate the information.
That way I wasted only a few minutes of each developer's time, instead of boring them all for an hour per week.
What other forcing functions is everyone using? (externally-imposed like meetings, or self-imposed)
I don't use forcing functions enough, which may imply missed opportunities to trade slightly higher-stress and increased busywork for greater productivity.
Engineers: All a meeting does is distract from work.
Every leader ever: if we could do the right work, we could have less meetings.
I agree with the sentiment. And also understand the rage you’ll get.
I’m so much more of a quick huddle/sync up rather than a meeting with 10 people who each speak (in the best case) 10% of the time. Having standing meetings for war and feasting (war being sprint planning, feasting being retro/demo) is essential. Standup/status meetings are largely a bane if they last more than 10m
To get the mathematical analogy back off track, some meeting series are "off-resonance" and result in lower amplitude. I'd have titled this "Weekly Meetings are Motivational".
100% agree that there are more and less valuable meetings. Agendas and todo checkins are signals of worthwhile meetings. And having a meeting end or change is a good sign too.
Meetings can be highly effective in getting things done if a clear and reasonable objective is set.
No way, this is terrible! There are so many great work tracking tools to use or more efficient ways to communicate that accomplish the same thing. Without making a bunch of people take time out of their day so you can ask them if they remembered to do part of their job. Good management creates systems so this kind of thing isn’t needed.
Lost me at the start:
"A recurring meeting serves as a powerful forcing function for long-running projects."
No it doesn't. It serves as a burden ball that gets kicked around on the calendar field once the value of the series has been tapped out but no one wants to cancel it.
"I didn't work on this because I was taking care of {something else}" kinda nullifies your forcing function, no?