Refactoring

Refactoring

Share this post

Refactoring
Refactoring
When Should You Have a Meeting? πŸ”‹
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More

When Should You Have a Meeting? πŸ”‹

And a small framework to decide what requires a meeting and what not.

Luca Rossi's avatar
Luca Rossi
May 07, 2021
βˆ™ Paid
19

Share this post

Refactoring
Refactoring
When Should You Have a Meeting? πŸ”‹
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
7
Share

Hey πŸ‘‹ this is Luca! Welcome to a πŸ”’ weekly edition πŸ”’ of Refactoring.

Every week I write advice on how to become a better engineering leader, backed by my own experience, research and case studies.

You can learn more about Refactoring here.

To receive all the full articles and support Refactoring, consider subscribing πŸ‘‡

Become a better tech leader ✨


A couple of weeks ago we discussed how communication should be designed inside our team. This is of course a very broad topic, and I started from a specific angle that is about responsibilities.

I also wrote briefly about the "Async vs Sync" feud. A few people reached out for advice and in the last few days I had some great conversations about meetings, calls, shared docs, and all kinds of ways of sharing information with your team.

When you get down to it, the big question is: how do you decide when something is worthy of a meeting, or is it better to be handled offline β€” with some written exchange or another way?

Let's work this out and build a simple framework, starting from first principles πŸ‘‡

πŸ”€ Async Communication

When we speak of "Async Communication", we usually mean a bundle of two qualities:

  • Async Communication – working with people in separate moments of time, not all together.

  • Written Communication – writing things down instead of saying them out loud.

I know, this is a bit trivial, but it was worth pointing out because these qualities do not always happen together.

You have work that is written, but real-time (e.g. shared docs in meetings, pair programming), and also communication that is async, but not written (e.g. audio messages).

These things aren't bad β€” writing a doc together in a meeting is often great β€” but they don’t provide as much as a shift as coupling writing and async together.

Let's discuss why both are great, and how this is different from meetings πŸ‘‡

This post is for paid subscribers

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
Β© 2025 Refactoring ETS
Privacy βˆ™ Terms βˆ™ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share

Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More