Here are the 7 biggest time wasters I’ve seen that kill delivery across our 160+ projects (I’m now a Head of Development).
1. The meeting trap
Switch to async updates for everything except critical bugs (you could save thousands of $$$).
2. Overengineering
Connect every tech decision to revenue impact.
3. Code review wars
Limit time for code reviews and focus them on architecture and bugs.
4. Manual testing dependency
automate regression tests for login, checkout, user registration, and core business workflows.
5. Overplanning
Limit planning cycles to 1-week to avoid scope creep.
6. Overdocumenting
Create self-documenting code + generate documentation for routine tasks with AI.
7. Code perfectionism
Ship functional features first and deprioritize refactoring until feature use is validated.
I wrote a full breakdown of all 7 time-wasters and fixes + examples from commercial projects:
<a href="https://effectivedelivery.io/p/dont-let-engineers-waste-time" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://effectivedelivery.io/p/dont-let-engineers-waste-time</a>
— Andrzej

Effective Delivery

A Head of Development shares 7 common time-wasting practices that hurt software delivery across 160+ projects: excessive meetings, overengineering, lengthy code reviews, manual testing dependencies, overplanning, excessive documentation, and code perfectionism. Solutions include switching to async updates, connecting tech decisions to revenue, limiting code review time, automating regression tests, shorter planning cycles, AI-generated documentation, and shipping functional features before refactoring.

🟣 Effective Delivery #7: Don’t let engineers waste time on pointless work