As engineers, we understand the marvels of asynchronous work. It’s delightful to work seamlessly in one’s preferred environment without interruptions, office noise, or commotion. Occasional meetings or gatherings can replenish solitude or enable thorough discussions.
However, despite knowing this, it seldom works smoothly, and many organizations are reverting to in-office work. Even those claiming to support remote work often depend on online meetings.
Why can’t we escape synchronous work? The blame lies with the work model. It’s because we’re meeting-driven.
Meeting-driven work refers to the reliance on meetings to conduct business.
It has two main features:
It’s akin to a school timetable. You merely attend according to the schedule and follow the facilitator or mood of each meeting. Even a child can do this. It’s an extremely easy way to work.
But since this approach depends on meetings, it can’t accommodate asynchronous work. We must fundamentally change our mindset.
A task-driven approach views all work as tasks, manages them through a system, and aims to close them.
Key features include:
As engineers, you’re likely already familiar with GitHub Issues, making this concept relatable. In a broad sense, it’s akin to turning everything into an Issue.
Traditional meeting-driven work required communication skills, especially the “social skills” to coordinate meetings and interact quickly during them.
Task-driven work is different. What’s important are task management skills. Specifically, the ability to engage with dozens (possibly hundreds) of tasks and manage them well through self-management and reading and writing skills for documenting tasks (indicated by a workspace).
Let’s see how a manager’s day changes from meeting-driven to task-driven.
Here’s a morning schedule for Manager M:
This schedule is meeting-driven, with four meetings between 9:30 and 11:30. Each meeting has a 30-minute window for spontaneous discussion and decision-making.
Of course, since meetings are scheduled commitments, they must be adhered to. While easy by sticking to the timetable, the work is inflexible and entails considerable effort in arranging and holding meetings.
Consider the following example:
Suppose the agenda of this daily meeting is:
In a task-driven approach, it might look like this:
These tasks are managed in a system. You might use GitHub Issues or, as described in QWINCS, wikis or notes. Any system that splits tasks into separate pages, operates smoothly, and incorporates concepts of open and closed statuses will suffice. You might even use creative representations like adding checkmarks to titles.
Once tasks are on the system, they only need to be updated asynchronously. If a reminder is necessary, simply send a mention.
Ans: Yes, it can.
If you think it can’t, it’s likely you’re still very meeting-driven.
As mentioned before, task-driven work requires skills in self-management and documentation. You need to be adept enough to easily handle the After mentioned above. These have often been underestimated soft skills, and shortcomings in even engineers, managers, or senior engineers are common.
That’s why I initiated Soft Skills Engineering.