Cesar FiestasTechnical Project Leader| Intuitive ProjectsNewport Beach, Ca, United States
Hello Experts,
Nowadays there are many ways for a project resource to enter their time. Either daily or weekly or even
Monthly but what is you experience when you have asked the resource to enter their time per task assigned?
Would resources have gotten aggravated when you have asked them to enter their time per task assigned?
After all measuring time per task can help provide a lot of metrics for other projects? Thanks for sharing Saving Changes...
What is the benefit to the individual team member of doing this? If they don't see any value to themselves in spending this type of effort, they will do the bare minimum and I wouldn't trust the data collected.
If there truly is a need for this level of granularity, then automate it as much as possible through use of timers or other transparent mechanisms which won't burden staff.
Kiron
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1 reply by Cesar Fiestas
Jan 04, 2019 8:24 AM
Cesar Fiestas
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Kiron,
Thanks for your input, automation is great let me tell you but...not everything can be yet automated..the idea is that as projects gets completed certain tasks are measured with % of error and duration. So that certain tasks duration are predicted better time wise
Saving Changes...
Guilherme CalobaProduction Engineer| PETROBRASRio De Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Cesar, I agree with Kiron on this one. If you need to have a timesheet to bill your project, it may be very necessary to have a control like this, but it doesn't seem to be your case. If you try to enforce something like this only for control sake, you may end with a major Parkinson law effect, where people make sure that they complete the task using all the time allowed for it.
Maybe you could add a comment to your question and we would be more useful to you.
Have a great 2019!
Guilherme.
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1 reply by Cesar Fiestas
Jan 04, 2019 8:26 AM
Cesar Fiestas
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Guilherme,
I hope all is well Sir, you have an absolute good point sir..will defintely take it into consideration :)
Saving Changes...
James PorterSr. Project Planner| Hitachi Rail STS USAGlenshaw, Pa, United States
Even when timesheets are required, it's necessary to strike a balance between granularity and practicality. From the standpoint of metrics, I agree it would be wonderful to have each task tracked by number of hours worked. But if too much detail is demanded, you will get pushback. If people are working more than a couple of different tasks each day you wish to track, you will find the accuracy of the timesheet declines as people tire of trying to record time daily. Then it becomes weekly (and they try to remember what they did) or even monthly (gross estimating) just to minimize the pain of the recording process.
I think you have to balance minimal pain for timesheet recording vs. how small of a task you really need to track. I think a good WBS structure can help here.
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1 reply by Cesar Fiestas
Jan 04, 2019 8:29 AM
Cesar Fiestas
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James,
I hope all well sir, yes indeed i have seen this happened before....so hence trying to find a better solution. Thank you indeed for your time
Time per task is a little crazy. Per story, per feature, per sub-deliverable maybe.
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1 reply by Cesar Fiestas
Jan 04, 2019 8:31 AM
Cesar Fiestas
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Sante,
For tracking purposes is the ideal way to track per task...the million dollars question is how to make it less invasive so people dont complain or dont enter or record wrong information
I've measured per task when working projects to improve specific process, identify bottlenecks, or when working as a group lead to improve our internal estimating capability.
To ask everyone to do that for general projects, would add an additional layer cost, and the team would probably revolt. Saving Changes...
Pench BattaEnterprise Lean Agile DevOps Coach /SAFe Program Consultant (SPC6)| Capgemini, Inc.Bentonville, Ar, United States
All most all the organizations are looking for time sheets. They are helpful for a lot of activities in the budget process. Organizations calculate CapEx and OpEx based on these time sheets. It may be difficult to take each and every activity for the time sheet consideration but it is needed.
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1 reply by Cesar Fiestas
Jan 04, 2019 9:31 AM
Cesar Fiestas
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Pench,
You are exactly correct this level of accuracy is needed for budget purposes as well as to move people around , decrease head count or increase headcount all of this to increase productivity
Saving Changes...
Drew CraigSr. Agile & Product Coach| VanguardPhiladelphia, Pa, United States
Absolutely need to consider the necessity to charge time at such a granular level. It can depend on the organization and type of project.
I ask my team to log work effort in their respective Jira tickets, as well as log overall time in our ERP system (this would include meetings, administrative, etc.).
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1 reply by Cesar Fiestas
Jan 04, 2019 9:33 AM
Cesar Fiestas
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Andrew,
Indeed everything needs to be taking into consideration meetings, tasks , etc specially in countries where the resources are being paid hourly, hence is more than fair to monitor their productivity.
Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Let me said that. In my actual work place, including myself, we need to fill each week what its named work sheet. It must be updated each friday because on monday the coporate audit team use them as an input in our TBM system. We have an integrate tool for portfolio/program/project management then people who create the work sheet has the possibility to take their time from the activities they are assigned. Is not the first place where I am in charge of that. If you ask me, it has no sense. Things in the actual world (in fact, from years ago) that´s not happen as stated into an schedule. So, if you need precision, forget about it. As any other type of things you will get accurancy with an amount of inherent error.
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1 reply by Cesar Fiestas
Jan 04, 2019 9:43 AM
Cesar Fiestas
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Sergio,
Thanks for sharing . But I think there are certain types of tasks that can be easily tracked and measure with a very low margin of error unlike software projects where is sort of hard to predict the hours needed to accomplished task within a predicted timeframe, many other types of projects can be easily "somewhat" predicted:)
Saving Changes...
Cesar FiestasTechnical Project Leader| Intuitive ProjectsNewport Beach, Ca, United States
Jan 02, 2019 11:12 AM
Replying to Kiron Bondale
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Cesar -
What is the benefit to the individual team member of doing this? If they don't see any value to themselves in spending this type of effort, they will do the bare minimum and I wouldn't trust the data collected.
If there truly is a need for this level of granularity, then automate it as much as possible through use of timers or other transparent mechanisms which won't burden staff.
Kiron
Kiron,
Thanks for your input, automation is great let me tell you but...not everything can be yet automated..the idea is that as projects gets completed certain tasks are measured with % of error and duration. So that certain tasks duration are predicted better time wise Saving Changes...
