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Something the VP of Engineering did at my current employer was to put a daily "Focused Work Time" calendar blocker on all devs' calendar from 8:00 AM until 10:3

by mikece 6y ago

Something the VP of Engineering did at my current employer was to put a daily "Focused Work Time" calendar blocker on all devs' calendar from 8:00 AM until 10:30 AM. The understanding this has communicated to other departments is that developer time is precious and interrupting them for menial crap isn't just a "hey, can I get five minutes of your time" but something that is significantly more disruptive and time costing. The bulk of meetings (status reports, incident reviews, training, info sharing) happens early in the afternoon, usually right after lunch when one's motivation to get into serious mental activity is less than from 3pm to 5pm. This has been awesome but would haven been impossible if not driven by a VP with the backing of the CEO. Things like this -- or "adopting agile" -- have to have backing from above and buy-in across departments to have any chance of success.

100011_100001 6y ago
That's part of the problem. It has to come from the top, and for management working is meeting. It's how they get information and delegate. It's why in most companies that kind of approach is not brought up. If I could have a half day work, half day meeting breakdown it would increase my productivity for sure. What grinds me down is if I get done with a meeting, and I have another meeting in 25 minutes it's simply not enough time to waste energy to get to the right headspace just so that I can stop right after I get there.