The Best of Time Management by Jason Wesltland

The Best of Time Management A selection of professional insights from the Blog archive

Since 2008 our project management professionals have been sharing knowledge, experience and learning with online readers via the Project Manager Blog. Their collective wisdom provides a wealth of how to, top tips and best practice advice, for project managers, teams and businesses. To make their writings more accessible we’ve created a series of “Best of” project management topics available free to download and share. Here is a collection of excerpts and insights from blog posts that discusses the benefits and uses of timesheets in terms of project management planning and team productivity. Enjoy!

Jason Westland CEO ProjectManager.com

What is a Timesheet? .................................................................................................................................. 3 How to Introduce Timesheet Software ....................................................................................................... 6 Why Timesheets Rock ................................................................................................................................. 8 Using Your Timesheet System to Improve Project Estimates ................................................................... 11 Ways to Accurately Record Time .............................................................................................................. 14 7 Characteristics of Time Tracking Systems that Work ............................................................................. 16 Getting to the Bottom of Effective Time Management ............................................................................ 19 How to Make a Timesheet That Provides Value ....................................................................................... 20 Why Timesheets are Important ................................................................................................................ 23 30 Day Free Software Trial ........................................................................................................................ 24

What is a Timesheet? There are different purposes a timesheet can fill depending upon what types of workers are employed. For example:

Hourly Workers The main purpose of the timesheet for hourly workers is to make sure they are properly paid. This timesheet doesn’t necessarily focus on what they did during that time; rather, its main purpose is to monitor the time worked.

Salaried Workers On the other end of the spectrum are salaried workers. These workers are paid the same regardless of how much time they put in at the job. The main focus for collecting time from a salaried worker is to understand not necessarily how long they have been working, but rather what they have been working on. The following are a list of 6 purposes a timesheet serves and provides a good definition for what is a timesheet.

1. Tracking Tool In the examples above, the most obvious use of a timesheet is that of a tracking tool. It allows management to monitor the comings and goings of their resources and how they are spending their time. One thing you do not want to do is exclusively use a timesheet as a tracking tool in the negative sense. If you are using it in a “big brother” capacity where you are effectively watching everything everyone does then you are missing the purpose of what is a timesheet. You can use a timesheet as a positive aspect as well. It can uncover areas where resources may find themselves bogged down and take longer than expected on a project. If you see this happening across multiple resources you can use this information to identify a broken process. Or, if you find it is happening with one or two resources, you can use this information as a coaching opportunity to help them personally improve. ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

2. Planning Tool Knowing how long a task, activity, phase, or some other element of a project took in the past is invaluable when it comes to planning your next project. Many estimates are based upon conjecture, hypotheses, educated guesses, and just some plain ol’ making things up. If a timesheet has been implemented in the proper way in your organization you can use this as a phenomenal resource when it comes to planning your next project. For example, a new project comes in and it seems remarkably similar to three other projects that have been completed in the past year. Pull up the timesheets from those projects and get a real-world sense for exactly how long this new project will take and use those numbers. That is a great use of timesheets and a good answer to the question of what is a timesheet.

3. Reporting Tool You may find yourself committing to a certain amount of work for a client each month on a retainer basis. They have agreed to pay <x> amount of dollars for <y> amount of work. This would be next to impossible to track without a timesheet in place. The resources that use this timesheet simply enter their time against this client and a particular project they are working on and at the end of the month the report is generated. You can then filter this report down into exactly what the client is looking for depending upon the amount of information they need.

4. Sales Tool This may seem like a strange answer to what is a timesheet good for, but you will find that if you provide your sales team with the facts about how long projects actually take then this will help them sell better. Many on the sales teams don’t have an in depth knowledge of what it takes to get the work out the door. That’s not their job. Their job is to get work in the door. It’s your job to get work out the door. However, it’s also the salesperson’s job to help the company make money. It’s hard for them to do this unless they have an idea of how long something takes to complete. You can use the ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

information from your timesheets to provide them with this information and provide more accurate estimates.

5. Protective Tool Another less than obvious answer to the “what is a timesheet” question is to use it as a protective tool. Who needs protection? Sometimes the resources who are expected to get the work done need protection from, sad to say, their own company. Management may have an idea of something that needs to get done and start throwing out some arbitrary dates for the completion of the work. These dates are 2 – 3 times more aggressive than what these resources could currently support, especially with the current workload upon them. But, if a timesheet mechanism is not in place to provide this factual information it will fall upon deaf ears and result in long days, late nights, and nonexistent weekends.

6. Barometer A barometer provides an idea of how the weather will be acting in the future based upon whether the air pressure is going up or down. Based upon these trends, people can make preparations for rain or carry on with their activities knowing the sun will shine. A timesheet can also be used for a similar purpose. You can use it as an early indicator if adjustments may need to be made later in the project. For example, there was an inordinate amount of hours that was consumed early on in the project due to technical difficulties. You now have an indication that there may need to be some adjustments made either later in the project, or perhaps fee adjustments, in order to get the project back on track. What about the question of whether a salaried person should track their time using a timesheet? If they are involved in the production of the project or their time is billable then they should absolutely be entering their time in a timesheet to help for all of the reasons above. What is a timesheet? A timesheet is a tool that can be used for much more than just knowing when a person clocks in and out. It’s time to get out of the prehistoric ages if ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

you are using it for only that purpose. Make sure to utilize your timesheet system to its fullest extent possible and you’ll find it becomes a valuable tool for your day to day project management.

How to Introduce Timesheet Software First, consider some of the benefits that a timesheet solution brings to an organization if it’s implemented correctly.

Provides a Baseline for Future Projects Companies that sell projects on either Fixed Fee or Time and Material basis need to have a solid baseline from which to estimate future projects. Nothing ever goes as smoothly as planned and the unexpected will always raise its ugly head on any project. Getting this dose of reality by understanding how long a project really takes allows for the Sales team to set expectations and start selling more profitable work.

Uncovers Areas that can be Optimized You may have a high-end (translated High Dollar) engineer, developer, or other resource working on a low-end task. This is not a smart use of that person’s time and can skew what a project should cost to complete. You want to charge what is fair and reasonable; however, by having to cover a high-end resources cost you may find that you price yourself out of the market. Using a timesheet can help uncover these areas for process improvement and proper resource allocation.

Minimizes Those who are Underutilized or Underperform Those who are great performers, do their job well, and contribute to the enterprise will not mind using a timesheet. They understand the business reasons and the benefits to them and the company. Unfortunately, there will be some who do not want their time ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

to be monitored and it may be for good reason. It will become apparent that they may be underperforming or underutilized. In either instance, efforts should be taken to correct the situation and get them back on the right track. If, however, they can’t find it within themselves to improve the situation they may need to find other opportunities outside of the organization. Understanding the benefits of implementing a time tracking software solution within an organization is the easy part. The trick comes to obtaining buy-in from those who will now be entering their time. While it is never easy to implement these types of changes in any organization, the following principles will allow this transition to go a bit smoother.

1. Build it With Them There are a lot of decisions to make when it comes to finding the right time sheet solution. Rather than go off and make the decision on your own and tell everyone what you decided, get with the users of the system and see what their needs are. Get their input into what activity should be tracked, how it should be tracked, how often it should be tracked and how granular the activity needs to be. Is the timesheet something that can be built in-house or is there something that already exists that meets everyone’s needs? This inclusive approach is sure to move people away from the dark side, and at the very least, get them toward neutral ground.

2. Help them see the Benefits of the System People who are responsible for delivering a project see the world very differently from the person who sells the project. Sales are out to make the deal with a “whatever it takes” attitude. This many times leaves the people who are responsible for delivering the project aghast at what was promised. However, they have no facts, no metrics, and nothing more than some faint memories of late nights and cold pizza from the last project that made it out door. Help them understand they can stop this madness by implementing a time sheet solution and introducing a dose of reality to those who are responsible for bringing work in the door.

3. Don’t make it Onerous When management realizes they can start getting a glimpse into what everyone is working on, they can get a little crazy. They want all the bells and whistles. They want 7 ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

levels of hierarchical activity captured in 15 minute increments with 200+ character descriptions with painstaking detail. They want people to clock in and clock out of a web timesheet. STOP THEM! Especially if you work in a professional environment such as web development, design, advertising, accounting or any other field with…uh, professionals. This is insulting, counterproductive and it can end up taking more time to enter Time than it does to do the work. Make it easy and fast to capture their time.

4. Find an Advocate Align yourself with someone on the team who can say “Come on Guys…it’s really not that bad.” Sometimes that’s all it takes to turn the tide toward an easier adoption. Companies evolve over time. Your business needs will change as well when it comes to the timesheet solution you implement to manage your projects. Follow the principles above when it comes to tracking time and you will quickly realize transformational benefits.

Why Timesheets Rock If you need to convince project team members and other stakeholders that timesheets really are worth the investment, here are three reasons why timesheets rock.

Timesheets Help You See What Has Happened The ‘looking back’ benefit of timesheets is that you can see what has happened in the past. This is useful because you can see which tasks are now complete and mark them as finished on the project plan. That’s probably the most basic use of a timesheet, but you can also use the historical data for other things. For example, looking back over what activities have happened you can see if they happened in the order that you expected. You can review the speed at which people work – you might find that one data analyst on your project completes tasks much ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

faster than another. This might be a sign that they are more experienced, or it could be that they are rushing the work and you will find that their outputs are of a lower quality than someone who takes longer. Overall, historical timesheet data helps you see what progress has been made on your project to date.

Timesheets Help You Plan Appropriately The ‘looking forward’ benefit of timesheets is that you can use the data to help you plan more effectively for the future. Timesheets give you lots of historical data about how long activities are taking and which people are most effective working on which tasks. You can use this to plan the rest of your project going forward. This is especially helpful for tasks that are part of the way through. Look at how many hours have been spent on a task to date and take an estimate of how complete that task is (with input from the relevant project team member, of course). Then you can work out how much more time is likely to be needed on that task. It could result in significant re-forecasting, but it is better to know and to schedule the rest of your project activity accordingly than get a few more weeks into the project and find that your activities are all running late. You can also use timesheet data to plan holidays. Ask your project team members to fill in their timesheets in advance for any days that they are scheduled to take vacation time. You can then use these to schedule upcoming work. Many project managers don’t have line management responsibility for their project team members which means it is often difficult to get visibility of holidays as they don’t ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

approve vacation requests. Getting this data via timesheets means at least you have some idea of when your critical resources will be away!

Timesheets Help You Estimate More Effectively The longer term benefit of timesheets is that you can use the information to put together better estimates on future projects. This is probably the most strategic use of timesheet data and can be of most help to those people in a Project Management Office role. However, even as a project manager you can still benefit from taking the time to look at historical timesheet data and comparing it to the task estimates. Pick a task to review, preferably one that you do on projects often so that it is something you will benefit from knowing more about. Let’s take quality testing for a new piece of software. Say that your plan originally had a duration of 10 days for quality testing with two people working on the task. The timesheets show that actually the quality testing task took 12 days. That’s four more days of effort than you had originally planned (two extra days for two people). Then you check again – three people have completed their timesheets saying they spent time on this task. Two are your original quality testers, and the extra person is another project team member who helped with testing admin and spent three days supporting the testing activity. Now that’s another three days of effort overall, taking the total to 27 days not the original 20 days of effort over 10 days of elapsed time. You’ve identified that you need to schedule in over another working week of effort if you do that type of testing on another software project in the future. On top of knowing that, you have also identified that quality testers need some admin support. Next time that you do a software project you’ll be able to factor that in from the ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

beginning so that your admin resource to support the testers is lined up and ready to go. These are the kind of insights that will help you plan future projects more effectively because you can use the data to learn from what actually happens in real life. On your next software project you’ll factor in the extra time and the extra pair of hands, and if you don’t need it, the quality testing task will finish more quickly. If a task finishes early it can sometimes cause problems on a project as the rest of the team isn’t ready to pick up the next steps, but I believe that finishing early on a project task is often easier to manage than finishing late. Timesheets have a lot going for them! They might seem unwieldy and yet another piece of admin to do on the project, but they really will help you manage the project more successfully. Talk to your project team members about why you are asking them to do timesheets. If they understand the benefits that timesheet data brings, they are far more likely to fill them in accurately so that you can have a better picture about the activity on the project. You can support them far better (and chase them up about progress far less) if they help you out and complete their timesheets accurately and in a timely fashion!

Using Your Timesheet System to Improve Project Estimates These 4 steps will help you optimize your timesheet system and enable you to give an objective answer the next time somebody asks how long something will take to complete.

1. Define Your Activities Clearly When you are setting up a timesheet system it is essential that there’s a clear definition of what needs to be done at what time on a project. One of the most effective ways of doing this is through the process of “modular decomposition”. ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

This is when you start with the largest building blocks of your project and continue to break them down into smaller and smaller chunks. You’re probably familiar with this when it comes to putting together a WBS but the same principle applies for how you track time in a timesheet system. Here’s an example that would work for a web development company. You would start at the highest level by defining a Phase for your project. Most web development projects would go through something like Sales > Plan > Design > Code > Test > Deploy > Maintain. This is the highest level of your project. Next, you would determine all the deliverables that are generated during each phase. In this example, we’ll focus on Design. In the Design phase you would create Logos and Comps. Then, you would drill down one more level and define what action you are taking on each of these deliverables. Comps would then have Create, Review, and Update. By setting up such a hierarchy you’re now in a position to clearly define each activity by Phase, Deliverable, and Action. This allows you to start pulling together historical information that shows exactly how long it takes to create a logo during the design phase. You’ll have this same type of information available for every other phase and deliverable on the project that you can then use as a basis for your solid estimates from your timesheet system.

2. Define Start and Stop Points Clearly To help your resources give you the type of information you need to provide accurate time duration estimates they need to understand exactly where they fit into the production workflow. There are two scenarios that occur if people don’t understand what they are responsible for on a project: 1) The work will be duplicated because two people thought they were responsible for a particular aspect of a project. This results in activity estimates that are twice as long as they should take or, ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

2) The work will not get done because they thought the other person was responsible for the work and was going to take care of that deliverable. This results in understated hours for a project. What can you do to remedy this situation of double-work or no-work? Put together an easy to understand diagram of the activities you defined in Step 1. This will allow you to clearly articulate and communicate who is responsible for each deliverable and when they come into play. A swim lane diagram works wonders for this type of documentation or some other type of document that provides Inputs, Processes, and Outputs that are assigned to an owner. The objective is that everyone clearly and precisely knows when the handoff occurs and is picked up by the next person in the production line.

3. Have Your Resources Focus on Reality Your resources need to understand that the timesheet system that you put in place is not to catch them doing something wrong. This of course goes under the assumption that you have the right people in place doing the job. Rather, your timesheet system is put in place to get an accurate picture of how long something really takes to complete. If you have never tracked time before in a timesheet, you will be amazed at how long something actually takes to complete. Communicate to your team that this is the type of information you need in order to manage effectively. Some may feel ashamed that it takes so long to complete something. Others may put in some arbitrary, flat-rate number that they put in for everything they do (For example, I worked with a developer once that anything and everything you would ask him to do was 40 hoursâ&#x20AC;Śno matter what it was). Make sure to communicate to them that this will help you provide the sales team with real numbers that they can work with to provide accurate estimates. It will also identify some areas that may be broken or in need of process improvement to make things better and easier for the team.

4. Compile and Analyze the Facts Once you have defined your process, assigned clear owners to activities, and asked them to capture their real durations in the timesheet system you set up, you can now analyze and report out on the facts. There is nothing better than Microsoft Excel Pivot Tables for this type of analysis and reporting. Pivot Tables allow you to slice and dice the ProjectManager.com ÂŠ 2013 All Rights Reserved

data in myriads of different ways to produce the types of reports that will be helpful and meaningful to your team, the sales department, and upper management. This will allow you to filter by resource, phase, deliverable, activity, and client in order to get a crystal clear view of what something takes to complete. Over time this type of priceless and meaningful information will allow you to answer the question of “how long will this take” with a deeply insightful and experienced answer based upon reality. One final thing you can do to make sure these estimates stick is get your sales team together and review the facts. Understand that they are out doing their job and if they don’t have these facts readily available they may veer into the path of some pretty farfetched numbers. Give them the tools they need of how long something really takes and you’ll end up with happier customers for them and less stress for you!

Ways to Accurately Record Time The following are some ways you can make sure the time that is being recorded against your project is as accurate as possible:

Instill the Correct Mentality about Timesheets You need to instill in your team that want an accurate reporting of time, not a reconciliation of how they are spending every minute of their 40-hour work week (or whatever the common workweek is). If your team members think you are using their timesheets to clobber them over the head anytime they don’t hit 40 hours exactly, then you better believe that every time sheet that is entered is going to add up to 40 hours exactly. ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

You know that with other meetings, administrative tasks, and other responsibilities this person is involved in there is no way that all that time can be attributed toward a particular set of projects. But, that is what will help as they enter their time in your project management tools. Make sure your team understands the motive and reason for collecting accurate time and they’ll be much more willing to provide that information to you.

Allow for Non-Project Time in Your Timesheets Telling them that you understand that their day is filled with other non-project related work, but then not giving them the ability to account for that time sends the wrong message. Make sure you include appropriate categories such as administration, meetings, mentoring others, and other categories of how people spend their time throughout the day.

Encourage Frequent Time Entry Quick…can you remember what you did one week ago at this exact time? Well, neither can your project team members. It’s easy for a day, a week, or even weeks slip away with a stitch of time being entered into any project management tools. It’s next to impossible to go back that far and recreate where the time was spent. This is a sure-fire recipe for “garbage in, garbage out” and reports that will quickly be sized up as inaccurate and not worth reading. Have your team enter their time on best case a daily basis and worst case a weekly basis. Don’t go beyond a week at a time.

Don’t Have Time Entered Before It Is Expended Here’s a common occurrence. It’s been a long week and everyone has worked extra hard. It’s late Thursday afternoon and some of your resources start putting in their time for the week. While they are at it they go ahead and put in Friday’s time as well. They have a general idea of what they’ll be working on tomorrow and this way they don’t have to worry about doing it tomorrow. You get your weekly timesheet and they get to leave on time. Sounds good in theory, but, the reality is that something could come up on Friday that doesn’t look like the timesheet they entered in the project management tools. This will result in one project being overcharged and one project being undercharged.

It’s not terribly complicated to enter accurate time in the project management tools you use to run your project. But, it does require diligence on your part to keep up with who is entering time and how often it is being entered. A gentle nudge or reminder is typically all that it takes to get someone to enter their time if they’ve gotten a little behind. Show them the results of the time that is being entered. You can highlight the higher revenues the company has brought in (job security for them), the better jobs Sales is selling (less frustration for them), and some of the areas management has been able to streamline (less aggravation for them). These positive results will encourage them to keep their time up-to-date and accurate and provide you with the information you need to run your projects.

7 Characteristics of Time Tracking Systems that Work You may wonder then, what are some of the characteristics you should look for when making a decision about purchasing and implementing a time tracking software system in your company. The following list contains 7 of the key requirements a time tracking system should possess.

1. They’re Based Upon How Work Gets Done in Your Company Every workplace has a certain way of moving projects through the company. Good time tracking systems recognize that this pattern of development is sacred (as long as it works) and will mirror how the group works rather than force everyone to conform to the way it tracks time. Implementing a time management system needs to be as non-obtrusive as possible. If you want your time tracking system to fail right out of the gate, then you’ll require those that work on your teams to conform to the way that it needs to track time. If you start causing the valuable people that are working on your projects to slow down and change their long-established ways, then get ready for an uphill battle that you will not win.

2. They’re Not Too Hot…They’re Not Too Cold Time tracking applications fall into two categories – extremely complex or extremely simple. The extremely complex versions include all the bells, whistles, and accoutrements that require a Ph.D. to program, understand, and implement. The extremely simple versions provide little more than a glorified spreadsheet in which to enter your time. Time tracking systems that work contain just the right amount of functionality that will neither overwhelm nor “under-whelm” the user. How can you judge if your project time tracking software system is either “too hot” or “too cold?” If you find that the people that are having to track their time in the application complain incessantly about how complicated it is or the amount of time it takes to enter their time, then it’s most likely “too hot” and won’t be adopted readily. On the other hand, if you find that Management complains about the lack of detail they receive about what is happening with the current projects or that the reports are too cumbersome to figure out, then it may be “too cold” and not supported from the top down. It’s up to you as the project manager to find the balance between one group and the next, to make sure that the time tracking system is meeting everyone’s needs.

3. They Don’t Require Much Thought to Use Your project team needs to have their mind on one thing – getting the project completed. Good time tracking systems make that easy by allowing project managers the ability to set up tasks and related information, assign them to developers who can then indicate the task is complete and how long it took. No thought required. Management can receive information exactly the way they want it (since they set the tasks up) and project resources can continue to NOT think about entering their time (which is the way it should be).

4. They Allow Users to Easily Create Reports Creating reports is different than customizing reports. Most time tracking systems contain the ability to set filters for pre-defined reports. Good timesheet systems allow you to create your own reports with minimal support (if any). The end user should have the ability to sort, subtotal and total hours, costs, ratios, percentages, charts and graphs all at their whim. The information-needs of management change from day to day… and ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

to rely upon somebody else to create the necessary reports slows down the ability to obtain necessary information.

5. They Accommodate the Full Life-Cycle of a Project Nearly all projects begin with an estimate that’s converted into production assignments. These production assignments serve as the basis to manage time and then archive postproject numbers to assist in creating the next estimates. Good time tracking systems must work seamlessly through the development cycle of a project. If you’re so inclined, the full lifecycle of a project could expand to include Sales and/or Administrative functions well. This gets into an area where people may raise an eyebrow about the value that’s returned from the effort, but if everyone is onboard this can definitely provide some good intelligence about the project. For example, you could set up some very simple tasks that the sales team could enter their time against (meeting with client, creating proposal, etc.) that provide visibility into how long the sales cycle ends up taking, both from a true duration point of view (the number of actual hours) as well as elapsed time (from start to finish).

6. They Allow for Ease of Time Entry Another quality of a time tracking system that will be readily adopted by those that need to use the application, is that there are multiple ways to enter their time. If a resource works on the same projects, deliverables and activities, week after week, then they should be able to copy the previous week’s activity in order to speed up the process. There should also be the ability to quickly and easily pick the activities to assign time against without having to dig through long lists of activities that have nothing to do with their current project. Web-based time tracking system is not only easy access it may also allow the activity lists to be customized for each user.

7. They Support the Ability to Export Time Entries Another feature of your chosen time tracking system should be the ability to export time entries into another application for even further analysis. For example, you may want to do a deep dive into what your team is working on for a client, but you don’t want to show them every single comment or activity that’s going on with the project. ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

The ability to export (into Excel) the time that has been entered for this client, will allow you to run Pivot Tables against the data and end up with a truly unique and customizable format. The reason for this is that it helps to keep your client up to date with what is happening with their project.

Why Giving Team Feedback is Critical Regardless of which time tracking system you choose, you need to make sure you’re providing the necessary feedback to the team, ensuring that the time they’re entering is worth the effort. This could be by letting them know that better time tracking has improved profitability or allowed for more accurate estimates from the sales team. Accurate time tracking also provides a basis for reality when it comes to how long something takes to complete. This will make anyone that has been victimized by unreasonable schedules realize that ‘keeping up with their time is a good thing and that it will ultimately benefit them.’

Getting to the Bottom of Effective Time Management One reason why estimating projects or even completion dates is so complicated is that it’s hard to get the truth out of anyone for how long something really takes. It’s not deliberate, but people have been trained through years of bad project or executive management to put up self-defense mechanisms for self-preservation.

Why Don’t People Tell the Truth about Time Management? People don’t like to tell the truth about time and time management simply because YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH! People and resources throughout the years have been trained by out-of-touch management and clueless and defenseless project managers that if they really told how long something would take, they would get laughed at or lose their job. Other reasons people don’t tell the truth about how long something will take is that they really don’t know. This could be because it’s a new person or the technology or implementation is something that hasn’t been tried before. Others take this as an opportunity to increase their job security by saying something will take much longer ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

than it actually will and it makes them look busy. Or, there is always the natural phenomenon that work will expand to fill the time allotted. If a task is given 100 hours to complete, then that task will take every bit of that 100 hours to finish. Amazing!

How to Get to the Truth on Time Management Have the conversation with your resources that are responsible for estimating time on your projects that you understand why they do what they do when it comes to time management. You understand that they pad their estimates to protect themselves, or they come in with ridiculously low numbers to make themselves look good out of the gate. However, they also need to understand that reality will always catch up and show how long something actually took, especially if you use time tracking software. Make a deal with them that if they shoot straight with you, you will respect and protect their hour estimates. You won’t overreact and say “no, you must do it in this amount of time if we’re going to price this right to get the work”. The amount of time it takes to complete a project is 100% separate from how much something will cost. Let your people know they can tell you the real number and you will work with that. The only thing you ask in turn from them is that they have truly done their due diligence in putting this number together and there is an extremely high degree of probability that it is accurate. Finally, document reality. Have people keep track of how long project work actually takes to complete using their time management tools. This can be used as a starting point for similar projects in the future that can help save everyone time. You’ll never be able to get project estimates 100% accurate, but you will be able to get them at least in the right ballpark. Learn from each win or loss and apply those lessons to all projects going forward.

How to Make a Timesheet That Provides Value May project managers have wondered how to make a timesheet that provides value. How to make a timesheet that not only provides value to the company, but even more importantly provides value to the person who has been asked to enter their time. We’ll start with how to make a timesheet that does not provide value and then provide some ideas on how you can make this drudgery almost enjoyable. ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

The following are some suggestions you can follow if you want to make a timesheet that everyone hates:

1. Make Sure it is bogged Down in Administrivia One thing you can do that will guarantee heavy groans and sighs whenever timesheet is mentioned is to turn it into an administrative nightmare. Make the login process complicated or have them pull up an entirely different timesheet application. Or, better yet, have them fill out their time on a spreadsheet and email it to someone to collect and aggregate their time. Then, make sure this person asks them all kinds of ridiculous, short-sighted questions about how they spent their time. Then, add an element of a painful approval process that either slows down them getting credit for the time they spent, or even not getting paid promptly and you have the beginnings of making a timesheet that is sure to bringing your toughest resource to their knees.

2. Make it as Disruptive as Possible The next step on how to make a timesheet that everyone hates is to make it as disruptive as possible. Get down into meticulous details about the work they were doing. Ask them detailed questions like “was the graphic image you were working on cropped from the left or the right?” or “which side of the truck did you take the necessary pipe out to complete the job?” and then make sure they fill out even more details in a 255-character Notes field. They’ll really hate that! Make sure to account for every bathroom break and dock them for that time.

3. Make Sure they know you’ve got Your Eyes on Them The finishing touch to really make a timesheet that everyone hates is to make sure they know that you know their every move. You know that they started at 8:05 instead of 8:00. You know they took an extra 15 minutes at lunch because the doctor appointment for their kid ran a bit long. You know that they left 10 minutes early on a Friday afternoon because it was their 20th ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

anniversary. Be sure to bring these points up in conversation with them so they know that you are tracking them with the precision of a hunter tracking down their next kill. OK…so these may be a bit over the top, but, not that much. You probably won’t find one place or person that breaks all of the rules above, but over a person’s professional lifetime they have undoubtedly encountered most, if not all of the above timesheet sins. Now do you understand why there’s such a huge sigh when it’s time to fill out timesheets for the week?

How to Make a Timesheet That Provides Value It’s really not that hard to make a timesheet that provides value. The biggest thing is to keep in mind your motive for requiring people to enter time. People will quickly learn and react accordingly if your motive is to hit them over the head with their timesheet entries. They will also quickly understand and react accordingly if they see how you are using the information gleaned from these timesheets to make their jobs easier and the company more productive. Here’s one place you can start to if you want to know how make a timesheet that provides value…keep it simple! Don’t ask for a ton of information that you will never use. There’s really no reason to ask for more than the following items: Date – You obviously need to know the date on which the work was done. Time spent– This is the duration of time that was spent on that particular activity. There are two ways to ask for this piece of information and pros and cons of each. From / To – The first way is to have someone enter the time they started a task to the time they finished. This is typically a better solution for someone who may be at their desk all day and working on their computer on a regular basis. Duration – The second option is equally as good and works better for someone that may be out on the road, at the client site, or elsewhere that will not allow them to enter their time throughout the day. They just need to enter how long they spent on the task at hand…usually rounded up to a 30-minute increment. ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

Client – You need to have the name of the client the work is being done for, especially if it is considered billable work. Project – Next, would be a short list of projects that are only assigned to that client. Don’t ask your people to do a whole lot of finding a needle in a haystack when it comes to which projects are assigned to which clients. Do this for them and make their job of entering time as easy as possible. What you did– The following will vary with every company’s particular needs, however, if you gather the following information you will find you have more than enough to put together unbelievably accurate estimates, and get an idea of those areas that may be candidates for improvement: Phase – Break your activity into 5-7 main Phases. This is the top level bucket of where activity occurs and can almost follow a departmental flow within your company. Examples of a phase would be Planning, Implementation, or Testing. Deliverable – For each phase, there is typically a set of core deliverables that will be worked on. Identify what those are and include them as part of the timesheet application you use. Examples of a Deliverable could be that within the Planning Phase, a Site Visit was done and a Blueprint was complete. Action (optional) - If you’ve done a good job of introducing the importance of accurately tracking time, people won’t mind this one last element. This is what was done to the Deliverable from above. For example, the following Actions could be taken on the Blueprint from above…Meeting, Create, Review, and Edit. Again, this is an optional attribute but one that can certainly bring value depending upon your organization. Using the above pattern will make it easier if you are wondering how to make a timesheet that provides value. Very simple and easy to use. Plus, the majority of information can be pre-populated so all that is left to fill out is the time spent, deliverable and action.

Why Timesheets are Important Want to know why everyone needs to fill in a timesheet, no matter what? Check out the following video http://www.projectmanager.com/timesheets-why-not-filling-them-isbad.php ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

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