3 ms·

My happiness in a job is inversely proportional to the diligence with which they track time and estimations.

ehnto 4y ago
It is a massive drain on morale. Billable hours sure, but tracking non-billable hours is just making management's job my job. I the impact it has is regularly underestimated.
- gnat 4y ago
  Very hard to know if you've missed logging some billable time if your work day isn't in the time tracking system. We hemorrhaged billable hours when I said ppl didn't have to log non-billable time. You'd end up with a 2.5h block and it was unclear if that was 2.5h of internal meetings and email and whatnot, or 1h of forgot-to-time billable and 1.5h of genuinely unbillable. It's a pain in the ass but people are fallible and this catches those falls.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    Admittedly I've lived exactly what you're saying, I do get it. But I'd love to explore less impactful alternatives. It depends a lot on the companies attitude towards it, and how it's implemented too. If the process of tracking time is too complicated, with too many layers of management wrapped up in the tracking process, you have a brand new overhead, and it's saddled with stress and miscommunication. Tracking non-billable hours can at least be done in a reasonable way, and maybe you're doing that . You can see the difference between asking someone to track "Meetings" as a line item, and asking them to track "Meetings for client X to job number 22324, wait no, that was last months, the new job number is 22342, and it's not billable this month, but next month it's billable again, I'm not the PM for next month so you'll have to chase up the job number with the new PM..."
- wiredfool 4y ago
  I want to know unbillable time, because coordination overhead and other crap can grow and eat into productive time. We put in sprints and standups (in a small co, With 2n projects) at one point, and tracking made us realize that this ceremony was costing us 15% of our time and maybe giving us 1% utility.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    I hope I'm not being too short, but why did it take atomic tracking from all your employees to figure that out? You should have known that when you implemented sprints and standups. I guess that's what I mean by making it my job. It shouldn't be too difficult in small companies to keep track of how much impact unbillable process has. Attend a standup, how long did it take? Probably takes about that long every time, do some quick math. Ask your developers, do they feel it's worthwhile? No? Scrap it, make it shorter. I can appreciate the impact of unbillable hours on the bottom line, and the impact of uncaught billable hours as well. But surely a PM can manage that without having to track every minute of the day? Set a guideline for billable hours per week, try to enable people to meet it. Be supportive rather than punitive.
    - wiredfool 4y ago
      At the time, I was a worker bee. Small dev staff (2 or 3, with 5-10 projects, so 1 person per project), Small company. CEO/Founder was the boss, and direct manager of everyone. I was 3/5 time, and only 2 days a week in the office, with others in and out of the office as well. So we do this thing, and the dev team impression is that it's taking a lot of time, but it was good because it was a way for micromanaging in bulk. But then we turn around and add up the time and it was a concrete way to say "This is taking too much time" without coming out and saying: "This is crap".
      - ehnto 4y ago
        Fair enough, as always real life is more nuanced than internet discussions. I know we do the things we do for good reasons, and with the best information we can get.
teknopaul 4y ago
I need a task list, I need to prioritise, so I publish that list on a wiki along with done/blocked/remarks. Each task ~1 day Once this is done (with a few blocked items that are manglement responsibility) I never get asked for estimates, or worse, Jira issues. It's not unreasonable that management want to know what you are doing and how long it will take. Make that easy for them in a way that suits you, and it stops being a burden.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  If you can get away with just that, it is definitely the happier end of the spectrum. Most organisations have a tao and it’s fit in or fuck off. So if they use Jira then so do the staff. And being scolded for a ticket status not being updated can be a thing.
MilStdJunkie 4y ago
How about tracking your time in increments of 6 minutes? Also, their system doesn't know what minutes are. You have to convert to decimal hours on the fly. BUT WAIT THERES MORE Every six minutes, also need to know which 30 character charge code you were working on. Also also the 15 character Work Breakdown Structure number (Sending Email, Review Process, etc). Which changes by Project. Also also also the 24 character project number. All of these. EVERY SIX MINUTES. OR YOU ARE FIRED. Single mistake, KICK. Here's your box. Goodbye. Keep in mind this is all for salaried staff. And. AND!!!! You can only charge a maximum of 1.7% hours on overhead tasks. Overhead tasks like . . liiiiiiikkkkeee . . DOING YOUR TIMECARD. Over the decades they've gotten really good at staffing with people who are good at timecards and/or who lie a lot. (I've moved on, thanks for asking, but it took me far too long)
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  My sympathies! Legal is definitely not for me.
  - MilStdJunkie 4y ago
    Oh man, I wish it was legal. Nah, this is defense. Now, it's normal to have this sort of charge structure, but not for everyone in the entire company. That was the canary, I guess, but I lost track of all the various red flags . . alarmingly quickly. It's like the contractor didn't have its own policies, then they got a contract, and just applied whatever was in their first contract as their generic process. Bargain basement staff, makes it even more absurd that they're tracking six minute increments for everyone. As if the salaried nature of the workforce didn't do that already. Case studies in "why you don't let customers set business process", because then you have dozens of businesses inside your business.
  - wombatpm 4y ago
    Government contracting. I worked for a Non-profit that was just as crazy with timekeeping. All of that detail went into generating the billing statement. The different activities were subject to different base rates as well as different overhead rates, depending what was negotiated in the contract with which ever agency we were dealing with.

It is a massive drain on morale. Billable hours sure, but tracking non-billable hours is just making management's job my job. I the impact it has is regularly underestimated.

gnat 4y ago
Very hard to know if you've missed logging some billable time if your work day isn't in the time tracking system. We hemorrhaged billable hours when I said ppl didn't have to log non-billable time. You'd end up with a 2.5h block and it was unclear if that was 2.5h of internal meetings and email and whatnot, or 1h of forgot-to-time billable and 1.5h of genuinely unbillable. It's a pain in the ass but people are fallible and this catches those falls.
- ehnto 4y ago
  Admittedly I've lived exactly what you're saying, I do get it. But I'd love to explore less impactful alternatives. It depends a lot on the companies attitude towards it, and how it's implemented too. If the process of tracking time is too complicated, with too many layers of management wrapped up in the tracking process, you have a brand new overhead, and it's saddled with stress and miscommunication. Tracking non-billable hours can at least be done in a reasonable way, and maybe you're doing that . You can see the difference between asking someone to track "Meetings" as a line item, and asking them to track "Meetings for client X to job number 22324, wait no, that was last months, the new job number is 22342, and it's not billable this month, but next month it's billable again, I'm not the PM for next month so you'll have to chase up the job number with the new PM..."
wiredfool 4y ago
I want to know unbillable time, because coordination overhead and other crap can grow and eat into productive time. We put in sprints and standups (in a small co, With 2n projects) at one point, and tracking made us realize that this ceremony was costing us 15% of our time and maybe giving us 1% utility.
- ehnto 4y ago
  I hope I'm not being too short, but why did it take atomic tracking from all your employees to figure that out? You should have known that when you implemented sprints and standups. I guess that's what I mean by making it my job. It shouldn't be too difficult in small companies to keep track of how much impact unbillable process has. Attend a standup, how long did it take? Probably takes about that long every time, do some quick math. Ask your developers, do they feel it's worthwhile? No? Scrap it, make it shorter. I can appreciate the impact of unbillable hours on the bottom line, and the impact of uncaught billable hours as well. But surely a PM can manage that without having to track every minute of the day? Set a guideline for billable hours per week, try to enable people to meet it. Be supportive rather than punitive.
  - wiredfool 4y ago
    At the time, I was a worker bee. Small dev staff (2 or 3, with 5-10 projects, so 1 person per project), Small company. CEO/Founder was the boss, and direct manager of everyone. I was 3/5 time, and only 2 days a week in the office, with others in and out of the office as well. So we do this thing, and the dev team impression is that it's taking a lot of time, but it was good because it was a way for micromanaging in bulk. But then we turn around and add up the time and it was a concrete way to say "This is taking too much time" without coming out and saying: "This is crap".
    - ehnto 4y ago
      Fair enough, as always real life is more nuanced than internet discussions. I know we do the things we do for good reasons, and with the best information we can get.

teknopaul 4y ago

I need a task list, I need to prioritise, so I publish that list on a wiki along with done/blocked/remarks. Each task ~1 day Once this is done (with a few blocked items that are manglement responsibility) I never get asked for estimates, or worse, Jira issues. It's not unreasonable that management want to know what you are doing and how long it will take. Make that easy for them in a way that suits you, and it stops being a burden.

quickthrower2 4y ago
If you can get away with just that, it is definitely the happier end of the spectrum. Most organisations have a tao and it’s fit in or fuck off. So if they use Jira then so do the staff. And being scolded for a ticket status not being updated can be a thing.

MilStdJunkie 4y ago

How about tracking your time in increments of 6 minutes? Also, their system doesn't know what minutes are. You have to convert to decimal hours on the fly. BUT WAIT THERES MORE Every six minutes, also need to know which 30 character charge code you were working on. Also also the 15 character Work Breakdown Structure number (Sending Email, Review Process, etc). Which changes by Project. Also also also the 24 character project number. All of these. EVERY SIX MINUTES. OR YOU ARE FIRED. Single mistake, KICK. Here's your box. Goodbye. Keep in mind this is all for salaried staff. And. AND!!!! You can only charge a maximum of 1.7% hours on overhead tasks. Overhead tasks like . . liiiiiiikkkkeee . . DOING YOUR TIMECARD. Over the decades they've gotten really good at staffing with people who are good at timecards and/or who lie a lot. (I've moved on, thanks for asking, but it took me far too long)

quickthrower2 4y ago
My sympathies! Legal is definitely not for me.
- MilStdJunkie 4y ago
  Oh man, I wish it was legal. Nah, this is defense. Now, it's normal to have this sort of charge structure, but not for everyone in the entire company. That was the canary, I guess, but I lost track of all the various red flags . . alarmingly quickly. It's like the contractor didn't have its own policies, then they got a contract, and just applied whatever was in their first contract as their generic process. Bargain basement staff, makes it even more absurd that they're tracking six minute increments for everyone. As if the salaried nature of the workforce didn't do that already. Case studies in "why you don't let customers set business process", because then you have dozens of businesses inside your business.
- wombatpm 4y ago
  Government contracting. I worked for a Non-profit that was just as crazy with timekeeping. All of that detail went into generating the billing statement. The different activities were subject to different base rates as well as different overhead rates, depending what was negotiated in the contract with which ever agency we were dealing with.