I have a query for all PMs. In my current company the management tracks the time spent for each project (for all resources)using a timesheet that's very detailed. Minute by minute data gathering. We have to enter time spent from 8-5 and show if the time is billable or not billable. This is putting lot of stress on the resources as the management likes to gather as much billable time as possible. Creative teams and engineering teams are under pressure to keep their billable so productivity is suffering. I think this timesheet is totally wrong and all we need from the resources is time spent on each project for a day. (instead of jotting down entire 8 hour work period)
8- 8-15 : Project 1
8:15- 8-45 : Project 2
8:45 - 9 am : project 3
..so on.
Any thoughts here?
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Josh NankivelEngineering Project Manager| AppleSioux Falls, Sd, United States
You asked for it... :-) In my opinion, you don't have a timesheet problem. You have a scheduling/workflow problem. I think the following applies for most industries.
It sounds like the resources are doing a lot of switching throughout the day. Multi-tasking can kill true productivity even if you can bill for it.
In my opinion, the work should be structured in such a way that one resource works on the same project for at least half the day if possible, if not the full day. Is it planned this way, or are these people putting out fires all day?
Personally, one thing that has worked for me stems from TOC processes I've adapted for personal time management. For an individual contributor to a project, they are their own resource constraint, all the time. There's only one of them. Set-up times involved with switching constantly between projects and tasks are wasted productivity. The more complex the tasks involved, the bigger the waste because of increased time to get their heads back in the game.
Instead, try teaching them to better manage their personal workload by queueing up at least 4 hours of work (if possible) on a single project before they start that work. Even though it might seem like this would create problems because you're not responding to the customer immediately (fire-fighting), I've found it reduces lead times for individuals and increases their productivity dramatically.
It also does wonders for relieving stress!!!! That's probably one of the biggest benefits! I know because I tested this on myself originally and still use it today. Here are the key components of what I do:
1. Each night before I leave, I schedule everything for the following day. Because I look at my daily processes as mini projects (including meetings) normally I've got less than 6-7 things to schedule, max. I prioritize, and if I have a choice between spending a half hour each on two things, I'll take the more important one and knock it out today, and knock out the other one tomorrow. I find it normally takes me 80% less than it would had I split my focus up.
2. I actually schedule an hour-long "day buffer" at the end of each day, and I estimate real task durations based on critical chain estimation which is the average, not worst case. I take the slack out of individual tasks.
3. I only check email 2 times, first thing in the morning and around noon. Period. I schedule time to deal with email, and I get it all done in a block. I estimate this technique has cut my time spent on email in half.
I know this seem like it's even worse than tracking your time on a timesheet every 15 minutes. But trust me, I spend a total of not even 10 minutes a day planning and prioritizing this way, and making sure I'm focused all day long. For that 15 minutes, I've personally gotten about half of my day back. And I've seen it do the same for others. The best way to work on multiple projects is to AVOID multi-tasking!
Management needs to realize that if their people are spending half their time documenting, half their time is lost productivity. It may look good for billable hours short-term, but the employee stress combined with customers wising up is going to catch up with you.
Hi there. I think in this case you need to look at it from the management's point of view. If all they know is that x people spent y hours on project A today they are virtually 'flying blind'. I wouldn't want to run a business this way. What is important is the way they use this information.
In my experience if they only use it to 'beat up' on people recording unbillable hours and encourage more billable hours, then that is exactly what they will get and the non billable hours will be hidden under billable activities (probably indiscriminately).
On the other hand if they are using the information sensibly to collect and refine project metrics, feeding this information into future tenders, estimating and scheduling efforts then it is definitely worthwhile and assists everyone in the long run. So long as non billable hours are for reasonable and required activities, these should just be taken into account (as an overhead) when determining what to charge the customer.
As Josh indicated, if filling in the timesheet at the end of the day is so onerous then either people are working on too many different things in a day or the recording is at too low a level. If it is the later perhaps you can negotiate some higher level categories that are tied to estimating and billing etc Saving Changes...
Josh & Anne-Marie, thanks for the comments & feedback.
The resources are not putting out fires but are actually working on multiple projects. So in one way it is resource issue. I would have liked resources handling individual projects but unfortunately it doesn't work out economically. But my question is how do we track billable time even when working on multiple projects without killing their productivity? Starting-stopping timer every 15 minutes (and keeping timer on non-billable work/break periods) is indeed frustrating for programmers.
I was told that management had some problems in the past where they exceeded the budget for pretty much every project so they resorted to strict time tracking methods. Billable time tracking (time spent on doing actual project work) is important but I feel the method is not developer friendly.
Imagine my situation when I talk to clients/team members/management and need to track time for time spent on communication.The calls last anywhere from 1 minute to 1 hour. Does this method suit a project manager? Saving Changes...
Josh NankivelEngineering Project Manager| AppleSioux Falls, Sd, United States
Deepak, this is a tough situation. It looks like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. If you can't push back on either side, I found some things that may or may not be helpful, I haven't used them but Autotask has a demo. I think it's going to be a struggle though. Even if you get a nifty wiz-bang software package, you're still going to have to spend a lot of time making sure that you've got 100% compliance and no one forgets to log something. With only a few minutes between items to track, that's pretty much impossible.
Is there an action that is part of each task that you can use to log time? For instance, if an email is sent out at the completion of each task, you could probably create some custom code in an Outlook template where it creates a timestamp in the email when opened and when sent. If the developer opens the email every time before they start work, you've got your time trail built in.
Or, maybe you need a central place where are requests are worked from. Something that has a timestamp on various actions, and allows them to have a 'queue' of tasks assigned to them. If things are coming in through email, there are lots of web-based packages out there that allow for this kind of functionality. If you post a little more detail about how the work actually arrives and gets distributed out to the developers, and in turn how they communicate the completion/deliverable, we could explore a little more in-depth.
I'm a bit of a boat-rocker, so I would probably spend a day of my time sitting with one of the developers. I'd have a stopwatch, and keep a running total of the time they spend TRACKING time, and the # of times they have to do it. Guess what, the time they spend TRACKING time isn't billable. I'd ask to see some documentation about WHY "they exceeded the budget for pretty much every project" in the past. It sounds to me like a knee-jerk reaction; they didn't have a clue why budgets were exceeded. Emotionally they feel like if they have more control things have to get better. This is a perfect example of micromanagement. If management doesn't relent, the best you can hope for is a method that doesn't impact the developers, before you lose your best people.
Josh NankivelEngineering Project Manager| AppleSioux Falls, Sd, United States
Deepak, Mark E. Mullaly just posted this great article that may be relevant to your situation. Check it out
here. Saving Changes...
Sameer IyerVice President - Salesforce Centre of Excellence| Barclays Bank, Plc.Pune, Maharashtra, India
Deepak, your management has to decide what is more important to them - such detailed time reporting or productivity. If time reporting is paramount for them, then they need to re-align the resources such that one person does not work on multiple projects - at least there should be an attempt to reduce the number of projects each person works on.
However, if the economic factors and productivity of each individual are important, then they should realise that this time-reporting simply would not work. In fact, this would lead to a loss of productivity, just as you have stated. That would defeat the very purpose of such micro-level time reporting.
Moreover, I am of the opinion that a project manager should be responsible for - and should be given a free hand for - ensuring that the team works with maximum productivity and the management has to show faith in him for that. If this is not the case in your organization, I would suggest that you - and maybe other project managers who are in a similar situation like you - take up this with your management and ask them to make a choice between productivity and time reporting. They cannot have the cake and eat it too.
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Selva Saravana PuvananthiranDelivery Lead Senior Manager| Accenture Solutions Private LimitedChennai, Tamil Nadu, India
I think that you may have to show some statistics to the management by following the management approach against alternative approaches and let the management decide which one is more productive for both the team and the company:
1. Track all the billable/non-billable times between 8am-5pm and the time that each person on the team spent just to enter the times as they wanted.
2. Spend 5-10 minutes at the end of the day each day to record what each person did for that day Or whatever the approach(es) that you think is appropriate.
Based on the statistics, the management may decide to re-think their policies. Saving Changes...
Josh NankivelEngineering Project Manager| AppleSioux Falls, Sd, United States
Allan Elder has some insightful things to say regarding multi-tasking in this episode of the Project Management Podcast. Check it out!
