You just sat through a 90-minute meeting with six people.
One manager prepared a 14-slide deck.
Two others edited it.
And it took a calendar dance to get everyone in the room.
So… what did it actually cost?
This isn’t a philosophical question. It’s a number.
Why it matters
A surprising amount of project effort goes into things that feel normal but aren’t tracked or questioned.
Status reports. Review decks. Strategy alignment meetings. Internal retrospectives.
Most have value, but none are free.
Understanding the real cost of meetings and documents can expose where time and money quietly disappear. It’s not about precision — it’s about seeing the shape of the effort.
These simple tools help estimate how much coordination, alignment, and formatting are actually costing you. Not to shame the work, but to ask: was it worth it?
It’s a quick check, not an audit. But sometimes, a rough number is enough to stop the next 14-slide deck before it starts.
Use it before justifying “it’s only an hour.”
And don’t fall for the classic excuse:
“It’s just internal people.”
Their time isn’t free. They’re not sitting idle waiting for meetings.
If they’re pulled into prep or alignment, their regular work is either delayed or shifted to someone else, which costs even more.
Untracked internal time is one of the quietest drains on delivery momentum.
Meeting Cost
Meeting Cost Estimator
Document Cost
Document Cost Estimator
Field Insight
One of the fastest ways I’ve ever unblocked a project was to show a sponsor what a weekly alignment meeting was costing. Not theoretically, in real world money.
Suddenly, decisions were made.