Calculating the cost of meetings

Meetings are necessary for information sharing, but are expensive in terms of time and money. If an application had access to a company's payroll and calendar systems, it'd be able to calculate the ongoing cost of meetings associated with a particular project, which could a useful data point in assessing whether a team is spending its time effectively.

Many people talk about their distain for meetings, but I'm skeptical that they track them like other business metrics, mainly because it's hard to do. As a result, these costs are unknown and often taken for granted.

This quantitative data would encourage teams to start meetings on time, to stay on task, and to end early when possible. Sitting in a conference room as a team doesn't constitute progress; it's the work that a team is tasked with and accomplishes that matters.