As programmers, we like to give in to the cliché of meetings as a waste of time and money. There are even a few meeting waste calculators around online.
We tend to confuse coding - the appearance of more lines in the editor - with progress. Thus we are hostile to any interruptions, meetings included, that break our imaginary progress.
But remember the last time you worked on a feature for a week, only to discover later it was unneeded? Or a small misunderstanding causing a bug that took a few days to find and fix? Meetings, or any other forms of discussion, can help to avoid building the wrong thing, which is a lot more expensive than the meeting itself.
Use the meeting unwaste calculator below to see how much money meetings save you!
Exercise I: Consider why, if meetings are profitable, are we not just having meetings all day long?
Exercise II: Try to find the conditions where the meeting is a zero-profit activity.