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The Best of Time Management

A selection of professional insights from the Blog archive

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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

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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.

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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

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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 non-

existent 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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”.

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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,

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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 hours…no 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

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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 far-

fetched 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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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 post-

project 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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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-is-

bad.php

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