cost of delay

temmet is a free browser-based cost meter — no accounts, no data sent to any server. This recipe shows how to use it to make the cost of coordination overhead visible across a sprint.

Every standup, every "quick sync", every interruptive blocker call is a session. Save them in history and you have a sprint-by-sprint budget for the cost of coordination overhead.

for who

Engineering managers, product managers, agile coaches, tech leads — anyone responsible for a team's throughput who suspects meetings are eating it.

the job

Make the cost of meta-work visible. Not just one meeting in isolation — the full sprint's worth of standups, retros, refinements, blocker calls, syncs. Compare across sprints. Find the patterns. Cut what doesn't pull weight.

how to map it

1. One template per recurring meeting type. "Daily standup", "Sprint retro", "1:1 sync", "Blocker call (3 people)". Each has its typical attendee count and average rate.
2. Run the meter for every synchronous session. Standups, retros, the surprise twenty-minute "quick question" that turns into a meeting.
3. Set the session label to something searchable. Use the sprint number ("S42") or the week ("2026-W03") so you can filter history later.
4. At sprint end, filter history by date or by label. The total tells you what coordination overhead cost the team this sprint.

the remix

• Use the search box to compute spend per meeting type. Search "standup" → all standup sessions surface → eyeball the totals or export to CSV for a sum.
• Sort history by cost, descending. The most expensive sessions are the ones to question first. They're often planning meetings that ran long, or all-hands that included the wrong people.
• Compare to sprint output. Number of points shipped vs. dollars spent in meetings. Meeting cost ÷ points shipped is a real (if rough) metric. Sprints with the worst ratio deserve a retro.
• Run the meter on the bad meetings. The ones where everyone's looking at their phones. Sharing the cost-per-minute number on screen is sometimes enough to get a meeting cancelled mid-meeting.

tips

• For 1:1s, consider using just two participants instead of putting both managers on the meeting. One row at the average of both salaries, one row per manager — pick the convention you'll stick with.
• A 30-minute standup with eight people at $100/hr each costs $400. A daily standup at that cost runs $2,000/week. That number is most useful when it surprises you.
• The PDF report is sharable — drop it into a doc when you propose cutting a meeting.
• Don't make this punitive. The point isn't to shame anyone for the cost of a meeting; it's to ensure the meeting is producing value commensurate with the cost.