I need some insight from those who have set up time tracking processes, before. We’re changing our approach from just tracking work on capital projects to tracking all work in IT. Among the desired outcomes is the ability to demonstrate how IT is spending time between capital projects, other projects, and keeping the lights on.
We use Jira for tracking work. A developer could receive multiple Jira “tickets” in a given week, for the same product. Some of the tickets could be new features for a capital project, some could be new features for a non-capital project, and some could be production issues for existing or newly released features. As things stand, now, the developer may not have a clear way to know if the time spent on the Jira items should be logged against a capital project, non-capital project, or maintenance/support.
If you’ve encountered this situation, was it handled successfully? How? Saving Changes...
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RAJESH K LProject Manager, PMP| Bharat Electronics, Bengaluru, IndiaBengaluru, Karnataka, India
Jira is a good tool to log the effort basing on efforts assigned.
combination of Microsoft Project & MS Outlook also helps in logging the effort in a timely manner. Saving Changes...
You should be able to track & log time in JIRA if you've configured & enabled time-tracking. So if time is tracked against each feature & ticket, it will be automatically falling under respective category of Capital project, Non-capital, maintenance, provided you create the tickets in respective project category.
You can check with JIRA support / documentation also for more details. Saving Changes...
Anton OosthuizenSenior Business Analyst / Project Manager| Self EmployedPretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
Mmm yes your question touches on a very real problem. The most common way I have seen this 'solved' is that the developer would just use the most 'obvious' choice and then the PM (or whoever is managing the time) would go and assign it to the correct allocation. Obviously, this is not really the way to do it since it does not solve anything and also the most 'obvious' choice become a 'just select the first available option'.
To really solve this problem you need to have the ability to attach attributes to a task beyond just the assignee when you assign it i.e. the project code, task code etc. I'm not really sure that Jira provides this since I have not used it extensively but this is the first thing I would investigate. But as Girija mentions I'm sure that if the ticket is created correctly then the time booked should go to the correct code.
Years back I used an application called Time Disciple that had some really cool features such as the ability to define these attributes that will allow the assignee to only book time against the allocated code thus taking away the option of choosing. It also limited the time booked and if it exceeded the allocated time the PM would be notified so that action can be taken. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
I am in charge to implement TBM (Technology Buiness Management) in my current work place. The best support we have for that and the situations you stated above is to implement a Configuration Management environment. You can find standards intisde the IEEE documentation including some documents with examples. The standard process has a step named contabilization that could help you to track all related to changes and help a lot mainly to improvement. Saving Changes...
Drew CraigSr. Agile & Product Coach| VanguardPhiladelphia, Pa, United States
You can continue to use JIRA leveraging its ability to organize by using the label feature and component feature. Assigning additional attributes to the work items, you are better able to create filters to showcase and/or for reporting.
Component 1 = Production
Component 2 = Capital
Component 3 = Non-Capital
Assign labels for additional attributes such as project name. Then estimate and logged actual hours. Saving Changes...
As Andrew has indicated, there are multiple standard and custom fields on JIRA issue types which could be used to categorize the type of time being tracked when those issues are created.
However, if the desire is to track 100% of staff time, how will administrative activities, meetings and non-working time be tracked?
JIRA is a good work management tool but for 100% time capture a more traditional timesheet tool integrated with JIRA might be more effective.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Anish AbrahamPrivacy Program Manager| University of WashingtonAuburn, Wa, United States
JIRA is a good tool for this, and I concur with my colleagues on this. Saving Changes...
We're using Tempo with Jira, so we can capture work that is not associated with a Jira ticket. The real challenge is setting things up to capture the level of detail we want with people entering accurate time. If we set it up so it is too complicated, there's a good chance that either the data will be inaccurate or we will encounter a lot of resistance, or both. If we go too high level, the data won't be meaningful.
We're not trying to show 40 hours a week; we're trying to show where IT is spending time on projects, maintenance, and possibly overhead (still being discussed). Some of our larger programs make this more challenging as we will have people in meetings where they discuss new work for a capital project, new work for regular feature updates, status of work in progress on both types of projects, and production issues.
I think we're just going to have to start simple, and then add detail as leadership determines what else they want to track. Starting too granular will put adoption at risk. Saving Changes...
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