Ask HN: How many hours do you use for sync-up meetings? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How many hours do you use for sync-up meetings?

4 pointsssowonny4 comments

I'm a product manager and also a leader of 7 people team.

I spend around:

- 15 minutes for daily stand-up meetings every day.

- 5 minutes to prepare the daily stand-up every day

- 1.5 hours for weekly team meetings

- 1 hour to prepare 1:1 meetings with my boss every week

- I need to make slides to report weekly progress.

- 30 minutes for the 1:1 meetings with my boss every week

So I use around 4.5 hours per week for sync-up. (Yes, I know that sync-up meetings are essential. But it takes too much time, IMHO.)

Is it normal? How many hours per week do you spend on sync-up meetings? (including preparation time)

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I find that leading a remote team means most adhoc syncing done between members go away so standups are required. Also, the higher up you go, the more of these meetings you need to be in if you want to stay aligned with everyone.

For me, I spend around 6+ hours on team sync up and 5 hours on 1:1s with DRs. But that's because I am very involved in most parts of the org.

You can replace meetings with documentation but you need to be disciplined to read all those and digest them. Or just think about the sync meetings as a time to build rapport with them.

You're not an IC anyway, you're measured by your team's work so alignment is necessary if you want them working on the right thing all the time.

I think spending 10% of your time on sync meetings is totally expected (at least in scrum) and doesn’t feel too outrageous to me.

For myself I have learned the total amount is rarely the problem but when meetings are. I am most productive in the morning hours so I asked everyone to schedule sync meetings in the afternoon and I have told my team I will not attend dailies unless it’s requested or I have some action that needs to be taken. Works out pretty good so far.

Bad Scrum plus SAFe ends up in around 30% sync and preparations, this is a yearly average since some meetings are quarterly

I spend 30 minutes on the 1:1 meetings with my boss every week. And 2-3 hours total per week of technical meetings with my colleagues, requested on as needed basis when either I or them need help or clarification.

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