A tech meeting can quickly become a sunk cost. Gather your 10 engineers team and talk non-stop for 2 hours about something they don’t care about. You will be wasting 20hs worth of development.
One way to measure a meeting’s ROI is by looking at its opportunity cost: what could those 10 engineers get done in 20hs if they were not attending the meeting?
A meeting becomes an investment when after 2hs, the engineers will accomplish something in 10hs that could’ve taken them 20hs.
If the meeting is about addressing questions, unblocking people, or detailing tasks, you will save time. Any 2hs meeting about how to best design, execute, and deliver will pay off.
Most engineers don’t realize that filling the gaps while developing, not understanding the feature’s business value, and overengineering because “I’m sure they will ask for it” are the real sunk costs.
I will pick a 2hs meeting over any 20hs refactor task, any given day.
