[celim307]

At one point I had 3 or 4 mandatory meetings a week, totaling 9 or 10 hours a week.

I think it was a side effect of the scrum coaches having little work to do, so we would have planning meetings with the whole team, even if nothing in your domain was on the schedule for the meeting. We also re-defined primative agile concepts every week, as in we would have to debate what a bug, task, or chore meant, every week.

When I raised the concept of meetings only involving those who it concerned, or even better, letting a workflow develop organically, I was accused of being lazy and not committed. In a lot of manager heavy orgs, the culture is that meetings are what productivity is measured by, and more visible.

[xvedejas]

Those are very long meetings! I consider myself lucky to work somewhere that 30 minute meetings are the norm, and if longer ones are needed we try 45 minutes before taking up a full hour. Being strict about ending on time encourages efficient use of everyone's time.