---
title: What a standing meeting costs
date: 2024-06-03
description: A back-of-envelope count of what four recurring meetings cost my team each month.
tags: [meetings]
---

In May I added up the recurring meetings on my team's calendar. I did it because Jun asked in standup why we always felt behind, and I did not have a better answer than "we are busy". Here is what I found for the four meetings we hold every week.

| Meeting          | Length | People | Hours per month |
| ---------------- | ------ | ------ | --------------- |
| Design standup   | 15 min | 6      | 6.0             |
| Product sync     | 45 min | 8      | 24.0            |
| Critique         | 60 min | 6      | 24.0            |
| Roadmap check-in | 30 min | 9      | 18.0            |

That is 72 person-hours a month, spread across six designers. It works out to twelve hours each, a day and a half of working time, before anyone has opened a file.[^1]

## What I did about it

I did not cut any of them. I looked at the product sync, where eight people sat for 45 minutes and I could only name two who spoke at every one. We made it a written update on Monday mornings with a 20-minute call for the questions that came back. The call has run for about eleven weeks and has been cancelled three times because nobody had questions.

The critique stayed. I would defend that one. The roadmap check-in shrank to 20 minutes after I started using the [meeting template](/notes/meeting-template) and put the decision it needs at the top.

I will count again in the autumn. I suspect the number goes back up, because meetings regrow like weeds.

[^1]: I counted only the meeting time itself. Preparation, context switching and the 10 minutes everyone spends getting coffee beforehand would make it higher.