7 Ways Meetings Kill Projects

The average PM spends 15-20 hours per week in meetings. Developers also lose 10-15 hours per week to meetings. What if half of this time is waste ? You arrive at work and your calendar is full of meetings. "How many meetings today?" "Five. The whole day is meetings." After meetings end, you say "Now I need to work." Meetings have become not part of work, but something that interferes with work. The data is shocking: Teams with many meetings: 35% project success rate Teams with few meetings: 75% project success rate The difference is 2x. Today we'll explore 7 mechanisms by which meetings destroy projects. 1. Hidden Cost of Context Switching A developer is focused on coding. Variable names, logic flow, bug locations... everything is loaded in their head. Then a calendar alarm rings. "5 minutes until meeting" 09:00 - Start coding (enter focus mode) 09:45 - Meeting alarm (focus broken) 10:00 - Meeting starts 11:00 - Meeting ends 11:15 - Return to desk 11:30 - Check email (post-meeting foll