We started using Read AI's meeting analytics for our sprint retrospectives. The stated goal was to improve efficiency by tracking "talk time" and "participation balance."
Instead, I'm seeing engineers clam up, then rush to speak just to hit their "target" participation score. The post-meeting report showing "X person dominated conversation" creates immediate, unproductive tension.
Key issues:
* Metrics are gamed. People speak to fill silence, not to contribute.
* It discourages thoughtful pauses. Quick reactions are rewarded over considered input.
* The focus has shifted from solving CI/CD pipeline problems to managing personal analytics.
This feels like optimizing for the wrong metric. My team's job is to build reliable pipelines, not to achieve perfect talk-time distribution. The tool is undermining the collaborative problem-solving we need.
Has anyone else faced this? How did you handle it—did you adjust the tool's use, or ditch it entirely?