How do I migrate my team to less meetings and more asynch communication?

Question

During this pandemic and the remote work it's brought on, my engineering team has been having more meetings than we used to. These break of the day, interrupt engineers productivity, and are just generally unpleasant. How can we start using more asynchronous communication to not have such large blocks of time taken from everyones day? I'm primarily looking for methods of asynchronous communication.

alexbanks · Accepted Answer

The phrase "this could've been an email" exists for a reason. Resist the urge to use Slack/messengers as a meeting replacement - they're too ephemeral and easy to lose. If something was worth a meeting, then it either stays as a meeting or switches to email.
What are the rise in meetings a symptom of? Are people using meetings to replace walking to someone's desk, or are they using meetings as a measurement of control/participation?
I've also found ~medium success with heads down/quiet hours, something like 10-12 and 3-5. Conversations/meetings/whatever have to happen outside of quiet hours because quiet hours are guaranteed productive time.

ggralak · Answer

This book about teams working in an async way got recommended to me few times over the last year:
https://products.arkency.com/async-remote/
Might be worthwhile looking at. (Not associated with authors at all)
Also I found this article how Doist is doing async work really good:
https://doist.com/blog/asynchronous-communication/

throwaway888abc · Answer

Sorry in rush now, but you can use https://p2theme.com/Decisions, tickets, etc.Completely async and transparent. (Of course, require discipline and writing)DEMO: https://p2breathedemo.wordpress.com/