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Six tips of tracking time spent by the employee on an agile project
For each Scrum master and for the whole agile team the most important thing is the done selected backlogs for the sprint, but not the time spent on coffee breaks or browsing the internet. And it’s the known fact, that in agile development the most essential issue is how much time is left to finish the user story, but not how much time was spent by each of the developer.
You should ask yourself whether you need the metrics of time at all. Why are you tracking time? One reasonable answer that comes to my mind can be to bill a Client: to know how much time was spent, to pay overtimes. If you can suggest more, I’ll appreciate your feedback!
Nevertheless there are some tips of tracking time:
1. You can use timesheet programs. You can either get each individual to maintain their own log (either at the end of each day, or as they go -- which is the best approach or they’ll forget what they did and make it up, or worse still, not do it at all), or use a shared resource like Google docs or Wiki-based.
2. You can use something like Evernote or Notepad and at the end of the day or week (best doing it every day) spend 15 minutes entering your time into something useful, collaborative, etc. BaseCamp has this facility. Lots of PM software packages do.
3. You can use some opensource software to help your software apartment to handle the projects: OpenKM - Document managment system and eTraxis - Bug tracking system.
4. You can use the programs like:
• JIRA it is user-friendly and web-based. You can have a look at it
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/
• VersionOne htpp://versionone.com
• Toggl. It is especially user-friendly when used with Toggl Desktop. There are free and paid versions. http://www.toggl.com/
• Redmine. It has a lot of the same capabilites as JIRA http://www.redmine.org/
5. One way of improving the productivity is to ban internet for the project. You can only allow access of work related sites in the office.
6. In case you are not familiar with what to do with the timesheet data to scientifically calculate how you are doing on the project, please see this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management
To sum it up, my advice will be to pay attention on time left to finish the user story and to trust the team to commit to the work.
You should ask yourself whether you need the metrics of time at all. Why are you tracking time? One reasonable answer that comes to my mind can be to bill a Client: to know how much time was spent, to pay overtimes. If you can suggest more, I’ll appreciate your feedback!
Nevertheless there are some tips of tracking time:
1. You can use timesheet programs. You can either get each individual to maintain their own log (either at the end of each day, or as they go -- which is the best approach or they’ll forget what they did and make it up, or worse still, not do it at all), or use a shared resource like Google docs or Wiki-based.
2. You can use something like Evernote or Notepad and at the end of the day or week (best doing it every day) spend 15 minutes entering your time into something useful, collaborative, etc. BaseCamp has this facility. Lots of PM software packages do.
3. You can use some opensource software to help your software apartment to handle the projects: OpenKM - Document managment system and eTraxis - Bug tracking system.
4. You can use the programs like:
• JIRA it is user-friendly and web-based. You can have a look at it
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/
• VersionOne htpp://versionone.com
• Toggl. It is especially user-friendly when used with Toggl Desktop. There are free and paid versions. http://www.toggl.com/
• Redmine. It has a lot of the same capabilites as JIRA http://www.redmine.org/
5. One way of improving the productivity is to ban internet for the project. You can only allow access of work related sites in the office.
6. In case you are not familiar with what to do with the timesheet data to scientifically calculate how you are doing on the project, please see this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management
To sum it up, my advice will be to pay attention on time left to finish the user story and to trust the team to commit to the work.
Add a Comment
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Comment by Jessie on July 24, 2011 at 6:32pm -
Very well said! I agree with all of your tips. I came to think on using software for tracking down my employees daily working hours amount. I do not think it is fair for me just to ask him the total number of hours he work for that day. Knowing that software can save you time, accurate and very convenient to use, but still I guess there is still a flaw when using such a thing. I found some useful information that can make up the mind of readers if it is really necessary or can it be a big of help if I were to buy one for work and business purposes. Visit this page! Really worth reading. :)
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Comment by David Koontz on June 18, 2011 at 4:53pm -
"One way of improving the productivity is to ban internet for the project."
Wow - really - where do you work? Bulgaria?
http://www.ted.com/talks/steve_keil_a_manifesto_for_play_for_bulgar...
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