Time tracking is a useful tool for monitoring how much time has been invested in various phases of a project. This transparency allows you to evaluate the reliability of job estimations and the efficiency of individual workers. Providers of professional services, employers of hourly workers or freelancers, and users of cost-plus pricing models all benefit greatly from time-tracking software.
Your team members should be able to add time entries quickly and simply to jobs using the time-tracking functionality of your project management software. Time reports for individual projects should be viewable and printable inside the program once the time has been logged. Time tracking in project management software (https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-project-manes | Study.com) should make it simple to record how much time was spent on various activities, see historical data, and generate reports.
Inputting Clock Times
You should be able to decide whether or not staff need to manually enter time or utilize an automated tracker in the software you use for project management. There are benefits and drawbacks to every choice; thus, the optimal approach is frequently task- or project-specific.
Workers using manual time tracking may choose an activity and manually record the time spent on it. The most notable advantage of this approach is the simplicity and convenience with which time may be monitored at any moment. As you go through your to-do list, you won’t need to keep track of when you started and stopped a timer.
The main problem with this approach, however, is that it might result in erroneous tracking. Manually recording time and inputting it hours or days afterward will certainly result in guesswork.
A timer or tracker may be used instead to automatically record, and report time spent on tasks. When an employee is ready to begin working on a job, they may start the timer by clicking the play button in the program, and they can pause or stop it at any moment.
If you need to keep track of time very precisely, a recorded timer is the way to go. If the cost of your project is determined by the number of hours of effort put into it, then this strategy may win over more customers and stakeholders. Because you can only measure time for one job at a time, staff must remember to halt the timer when they take breaks or switch tasks.
Consider the scenario when one of your employees is hard at work on a job related to your project when another project manager stops by to ask a question regarding their own endeavor. Sometimes the little inquiry leads to an unexpectedly lengthy meeting of an hour’s duration. A task with an extra hour of labor would be added to your project if an employee neglected to halt the timer.
This oversight will drive up your project expenditure and may cause you to recalculate your budget entirely. One hour might not seem like much, but when multiplied over several personnel and months, it may have a major influence on the final product.
Maintaining a time log
Choose a project management tool that provides many methods of viewing employee time spent on the project.
- By action
- Meaningful Work
- Working Person
Time spent on each project may be easily tracked and managed without resorting to micromanagement. For instance, it’s simple to discover whether jobs are costing more than expected or are falling behind schedule. Keeping note of how much time is spent on each individual activity can also aid in developing cost and time projections for comparable tasks in future projects.
The overall picture may be seen with the help of time monitoring at the project level. Quickly evaluate the state of your project and its success using this tool. Earned value management system (EVMS) relies on this kind of precision even for large-scale projects. Click here to read more on the earned value management system. For projects with 100+ tasks, task-level EVMS is too complicated.
Hours worked should be recorded individually for each worker so that output and efficiency may be assessed in real-time. This is particularly important for hourly workers, but it may benefit salaried workers as well.
Two workers’ times for doing the same set of duties may be compared, for instance. If one of the two takes noticeably longer than the other, it might mean one of them has found a better method to do tasks, or that the other needs additional training or coaching.
Tracking staff time is another useful tool for keeping tabs on productivity and preventing bottlenecks. One engineer may need to have more responsibility taken off his plate if another, although being a full-time employee at the same salary level, spent just 20 hours on the project last week.
Developing Reports
Your project management tool should generate two different kinds of reports:
- Timesheets
- Status of Time
Timesheets provide workers with a snapshot of their week in terms of the projects they worked on and the amount of time spent on each. These time sheets must contain:
- Activities for which the worker has set up time monitoring for the given week
- The employee’s allocated tasks that were planned for the given week
- All tasks for the specified week that have been marked with a star or a flag.
- Any work that goes beyond what the employee’s time tracking or project management tool automatically records.
Timesheets allow workers to keep close tabs on their productivity. It gives them a consolidated view of their weekly priorities and their progress toward completing those priorities over the course of the week.
The project manager and other interested parties should examine the time reports. These reports should be accessible both in-app and as downloaded documents (in CSV or PDF format) inside the project management software.
You should be able to filter your time reports by certain activities, projects, workers, and/or dates. A report detailing the time spent on the client’s project over the last month, for instance, may be required.
Time tracking’s many advantages
Finding techniques to track progress without engaging in micromanagement is a problem for every project manager. After all, nobody can give 100% when they know their employer is watching their every move. A large delay or time overrun might catch you off guard if you don’t have visibility into how employees are spending their time.
Several companies now rely heavily on time monitoring applications such as https://www.getharvest.com/resources/invoice-template-pdf, which provide valuable data to help managers streamline operations and keep workers focused.
The most effective time-tracking tool is one that works seamlessly with your existing project management program. In that manner, jobs may be allocated time automatically, and there is no need to manually transmit information or synchronize several systems.
Time monitoring allows you to keep tabs on work in progress in near real-time and collects information for more precise future forecasts. Information gleaned from time monitoring applications may also shed light on critical concerns including the people and materials needed to finish a project.
For instance, time monitoring might reveal whether workers are taking excessive sick days or diverting too much attention from their assigned tasks. Data analysis might also reveal opportunities for improved time management among staff members.