A project management blog for manufacturing and engineering
Project rollups in Standard Time are a welcomed feature for project managers. The Duration and Actual values show at the project level, just like MS Project. When time is added to the timesheet, values roll up and managers can see employee hours at a glance!
Standard Time will track PTO and other time off accruals. E.g. vacation, sick, personal, etc. An employee can request hours that have been accrued in Standard Time. Email notifications are sent to managers and an email comes back when approval occurs. Its that easy!
Standard Time® helps you win by increasing your sales! It can keep track of project proposals and task lists for your clients. Your employees can download an app for their Android or iOS phones.
Scroll down for the video.
This project revenue chart is like a sales funnel. You can set the percentage of possible win, and the chart will forecast how much revenue you are likely to get from all the deals. So let’s say you set the percentage to 50%. the chart will show half the expected revenue. If you set the win percentage to 100%, it will show the full amount. The fact is, you will either win the proposal or not. There is no such thing as winning 50% of a proposal. But the chart is trying to forecast the probably income from all the project proposals combined. You probably won’t win all of them, so the revenue shown is your probable results.
Standard Time does a lot more than project project revenue. It’s got a full task list for each employee. There is time and expense tracking. And PTO time off accruals. You can run your whole consulting or engineering organization from it. Not bad for a timesheet app!
This video will show you how Standard Time uses rates for client invoicing. Different rates for different employees. Once Standard Time is set up you won’t need to fuss with it. Just set each project rate for each employee and you’re done.
You have several models to choose from:
Check stdtime.com for more details.
Here’s a graph of employee availability in Standard Time®. It shows when employees are available for work. This is a lot like a resource allocation graph, but inverted. The bars show when employees are available, unlike a resource allocation chart where the bars show hours the employee has work assigned.
You’ll need this if you are a consulting, engineering, or manufacturing organization. It’s important to see when employees have projects assigned. Standard Time provides that.
This video shows how the Standard Time timesheet displays project tasks. Each timesheet is different for each employee. That makes things pretty handy!
Here’s a new video showing the Standard Time Android and iOS apps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIbkf4SEXzc
All your time and expenses sync with the cloud or desktop. So you can track project hours on the mobile device and it will find it’s way up to the big database in the sky. Project managers like that because they get more accurate project time. Remember, the more frequently employees enter hours, the accurate the project is.
Project schedules depend on accurate actuals. So if you can get them to update their timesheets on a regular basis, then you’re farther ahead. That’s what this app does. It encourages employee input when the actual work is performed.
Good question! What is a project milestone?
Think of a project milestone as a marker in time where you stop and evaluate your project.
How is your project going? Have you completed everything necessary to move on to the next level? Have you finished everything in this milestone? And are you ready to move forward to the next one?
The video below shows what milestones look like in a Gantt chart, and how to track time to them. But normally you don’t actually track time to milestones. They are just markers in time, not actual tasks. But you can if you want to. In fact, you could set up a project with nothing but milestones! Just track hours to them and compare against your original estimates. That’s a simple way to track projects.
In the old days, a milestones was a physical stone erected by the road. There would be one stone every mile. Just count the stones as you waked along, and you would know how far you had traveled, and how far the next town was. They were just like our interstate mile markers now.
Project milestones are very similar. They tell you how far into the project you have traveled. Got a big project? Put up a milestone every so often and you’ll know where you are.
Has a customer of yours ever forgotten to get back with you about a feature you were developing for them? They were hot to finish, but then weeks went by and no word. Maybe the feature was almost finished, and you just needed a little more information to complete it. One phone call or email and it would be finished.
But guess what happens when these delays occur?
All the feature nuances you kept in your head are now slipping… A week goes by… Two weeks… A month… By now you’ve forgotten some of the little details that made finishing the feature so simple. You’ll have to relearn some of those and get the feature back on track. What would have taken a short time to complete will now take four times as longs.
When this happens, you are essentially reallocating resources to complete the job. In some cases when too much time has elapsed, you might just as well restart the project and reschedule hours to come up to speed. All that admin scheduling take time too.
Moral of the story: Don’t let these little delays creep in in first place. Stay on top of your dependent resources so they don’t leave you with a long forgetful delay.
Below is a short commentary on a fun article I recently read. (See link below.) The Online Business Degree put together a list of the best teams ever assembled. I read through the list and agreed with most. Some sounded a little contrived, but workable. Here are my reactions.
I’ll take each team in order:
1. The Dream Team:
Yes, they were the finest basketball team ever assembled, but they were also professionals. I thought the Olympics was supposed to be amateur. I vaguely remembered a guy named Jim Thorpe losing his metals because he was accused of accepting gifts. I’m behind the curve on this; maybe The Olympics has turned pro, and I missed it. But the Dream Team always seemed odd to me.
2. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson as fictional characters. They weren’t real. But they sure had some fun adventures, and the recent Hollywood film is pretty good. Doyle presented them as pretty good team, I must admit. Still… it’s hard to get behind them as a real team.
3. Rogers and Hammerstein:
Now here’s a great team! Nothing fake about them. This was some of the greatest music of the Twentieth Century.
4. SEAL Team Six:
Worthy of our worship (figuratively speaking). Have you seen how SEAL teams are trained and formed? Watch the documentary some time… It’s amazing!!!
5. The Beatles:
Yep, I’d go with them too! Millions of people around the world still listen to their music. But “more famous than Jesus”? I don’t think so.
6. 1985 Chicago Bears:
Don’t know much about sports, so I can’t comment much. But hey… if they won a Super Bowl they had to be pretty good.
7. The Justice League:
Another fictional team. Humm… I’m not convinced fictional teams work for me. It’s easy to write fiction because the characters don’t actually have to accomplish anything. You can just write up a bunch of cool scenes and you’re done. Can I learn anything from fiction? Yes. But generally, non-fiction is the most inspiring to me.
8. The Apollo 11 team:
Now here’s a real super hero team! These guys went to the moon with less computing power then an iPod. Pretty amazing when you think about it!
9. The Not Ready for Primetime Players:
Wonderful team of comedians! I’ve always enjoyed them.
10. The Manhattan Project:
Yes! Another great team of scientists that I can get behind. Most people don’t know how great these guys actually were, and how they literally saved the world. But sadly… most people don’t know history.
If I had created the list, I would have dropped the fictional teams. Sure, they sound great, but it’s debatable how much they actually inspire. For instance, Sherlock Holmes was a pretty smart character, but most people find it difficult to pattern their lives after a character in a novel. It’s like trying to be more like Huck Finn or Indiana Jones. It’s entertaining, but not inspiring.
Lastly, I would have liked to see “The 12 Disciples” listed as a team. Jesus didn’t pick them for their skills and awesome speaking abilities, but in the end they changed the world. That kind of power can’t be ignored, and they are men you can comfortably pattern your life after.
Overall… it was a fun article. It was well thought out, and fun to read.