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Jan. 23, 2022
Are you frustrated with late night meetings and meetings at odd hours? Are you forced to join the calls even when you are a passive listener and not adding much of a value?
It is not the work that spoils the work-life balance, it is the meetings. The pandemic has only worsened the situation, there are people who are on calls all through the day, by the way, the day here is not 8hrs but 12 to 14hrs.
In the name of collaboration, are people spending more time in the meetings thus causing work-life imbalance?
There are many calls with 10, 20 or even 50+ people in the call with only handful of people talking or contributing to the call. Rest are all in the call but are either browsing or doing their work. As working is difficult while the call is on, people are mostly browsing - huge loss of productivity, waste of time, waste of life.
A lot of times, meetings get cancelled or rescheduled in the last minute due to various reasons, more so when the participants are from multiple TimeZones - again loss of productivity and waste of time.
Any work done in the time of cancelled meetings is not productive.
It is estimated that developers on an average spend only 2hrs on actual development / problem solving. Where is the rest of the time going?
Why is this the case? Why should one be part of so many meetings and calls when the meetings add little or no value to the work at hand?
Is it because people's time is taken for granted? Or is it how the higher-ups get educated and get a clue on what is going on?
As the company size grows, the non-productive hours grow too, as the layers in the organizations grow, the non-productive hours grow too. Every layer in the org needs to be felt important, relevant and this is unfortunately achieved through meetings, meetings and more meetings.
There is a severe war going on for talent, companies instead of chasing for more talent should look inwards and work towards cutting down the meetings and give more time back to developers. This results in more productivity and work-life balance.
Many organizations are trying no-meeting days etc. But that is not sufficient, it should be part of the culture.
Organizations should let developers do their job. For developers do their job, there should be clarity in the ask. Is there enough clarity in the ask?
Lack of clarity in the ask results in multiple iterations of the requirements, multiple iterations of the solution, multiple iterations of code, many changes to schedule.
When any change happens, instead of empowering the responsible parties fix it, there are more meetings added to discuss the change, impact, efforts, schedule and in the process, we spend 10hours to save 1hr.
Why? Because people's time is taken for granted.
The remote work is going to stay (forever?) and if this is not addressed well, the world of work will continue to be in more meetings causing work-life imbalance.
What is the solution?
Here is an experiment for organizations to try.
There are three key players in the equation:
Business person that needs capability Product Owner & Architect combo that turns the requirement into a techno-functional delivery unit Developer who develops and delivers
For this experiment to be successful, let's keep all other roles and layers out of the equation.
Every role mentioned above should not know the next person(s) in the equation.
Business person requiring a specific capability, should do thorough research and provide requirement with utmost clarity and all the details. Zero ambiguity.
Product Owner & Architect should work together to document clear steps, design, deliverable and acceptance criteria such that developer who picks up the work should ask for "next to zero" clarifications.
The output from Product Owner-Architect combo should be passed on to a developer in a different unit, group OR even better if it is outsourced to platform (AiDOOS) to really test it.
This results in minimal to zero meetings and every role is doing their job, not necessarily participating in meeting after meeting.
For this experiment to be successful, the output generated by Product Owner-Architect combo is extremely critical hence it is better to outsource to a completely unknown developer on a platform (AiDOOS).
When the experiment is successful, scale it to a module with the equation being:
Business Group (1 person) Product Owner-Architect combo (2 persons) Developers (8 persons)
If this is done well, imagine the power of scale - the whole developer community is available to you through the platform model. You can go as fast as you want.
When conventional models do not work, let's breakout and try different approach.
Technology is ripe to shed the decades old models and adapt to new models of work. Platform models are the future (of work), they bring the entire talent to your doorstep.
18% of the companies in the world are fully remote with no headquarters as of 2020 — up from only 2% in the last year.
WordPress, the CMS company, and the website with the 15th highest web traffic have a 100% remote workforce. Can you believe that?
With the arrival of new technological innovation and the availability of technological infrastructure at such an affordable rate, people are showing preference toward working remotely. Not only does the team member save time and money in commuting, but the employer saves a ton of money in constructing or renting in-house office infrastructure.
The pandemic forced everyone to go 'remote' to survive the coronavirus, catalyzing the rate of people preferring to work from home.
According to Forbes, more than 70% of the workforce will be working from home at least five days a month.
In a globalized workforce where teams span multiple time zones, Virtual Delivery Centers (VDCs) emerge as a game-changer for managing time zone challenges effectively. By shifting from traditional meeting-heavy cultures to asynchronous task-driven models, VDCs enable seamless collaboration across borders.
Asynchronous Workflows: VDCs are designed around task-based execution, where contributors can work independently within their time zones. This eliminates the need for constant real-time interactions, reducing meeting fatigue and enabling higher productivity.
Centralized Task Management: Leveraging advanced project management tools, VDCs provide a unified platform where tasks, updates, and deliverables are accessible in real time. This ensures continuity in project progress without the need for overlapping work hours.
Flexible Meeting Structures: When real-time interaction is required, VDCs incorporate optimized scheduling algorithms to accommodate all participants’ time zones, ensuring inclusivity and minimal disruption.
Global Talent Integration: With VDCs, organizations can seamlessly onboard and manage talent from any part of the world, leveraging time zone differences as an advantage to enable round-the-clock productivity.
Task Transparency: Detailed logs, updates, and outcomes are visible to all stakeholders, fostering accountability and eliminating the need for excessive meetings to track progress.
Virtual Delivery Centers redefine how organizations operate in a distributed world, ensuring that time zones and meetings become enablers of efficiency rather than barriers to collaboration.
Access to talent worldwide is a revolutionary advantage, thanks to the internet and platforms, you can now leverage the entire tech talent of the world sans location barrier.
Leveraging the talent and allowing people to work on their terms can't be easier and more effective than using the game-changing visionary platform AiDOOS.
AiDOOS has readily available best-in-class subject-matter experts with proven experience that are well-versed in enterprise software development knowledge.
This modern AI-based platform allows you to publish your task, assign a due date, and find the most appropriate expert while allowing you to track the project in the pipeline with management tools, such as Jira, ServiceNow, and TFS.
The AiDOOS model is a futuristic platform that ditches the conventional services models, encouraging enterprises to free themselves from big office infrastructures, long-winded hiring processes, unnecessarily paying for unproductive hours and many such benefits.
Sit back and relax while AiDOOS find the perfect hands for every job you post, and get it done in no time with huge cost savings to the company: Join AiDOOS today!
