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Simple Timesheet Notes

Standard Time® allows you to put notes in with your time. Keep track of projects and remind yourself along the way!

These timesheet notes can serve many purposes.  They can find their way onto client invoices.  They can act as project status in a report.  Or, they can simply remind you of what you did.  Consider this the biggest project communication tool you have.  It is your memory… it is your direct communication to clients and consumers of your project work… and it is historical documentation your organization can rely on.

All that from a simple edit field in a project timesheet?

Not really… there are other time log fields that serve the same purpose.  Don’t overlook the start and stop times.  Those simple fields mean a lot to consumers of your work.  The date alone is big.  The timestamp is better, but not always necessary or used.  And consider that the project, subproject, client, and category all help to categorize the work you do.  All that is collected without a lot of effort, but those who view your historical records find it invaluable.

 

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Better Than a Spreadsheet

Don’t use a spreadsheet to track your projects. This video will show you a better way.

I guess every hardcore project manager knows that.  But it’s worth a reminder.  Watch the video.

Here’s the first point.  You can’t sync Android and iOS with a spreadsheet.  That means somebody is stuck entering time on a desktop.  What about your employees in the field?  How do they get their hours back to your project?  Why not just use an app that syncs?

Second: In a spreadsheet, your billing rates will get so out of whack you’ll want to off yourself.  There are tools for this sort of thing you know.  Just sayin’  🙂

Third, your spreadsheet is not likely to look for user mistakes.  So you’ll be correcting them every week.  Is that a good use of your time?  And what if you make a mistake.  10% of those mistakes never get found.  Multiply those hours times your billing rate.  That’s how much you lose in human error.  Uggh…

Fourth, sure, you can create some charts to show project status in a spreadsheet.  But are they all encompassing?  Or do you update them every time something changes.

Fifth: Can you log in with the web.  Sort of… I guess.  But now you have sharing issues.

And lastly, you really don’t get a lot of project management in spreadsheets.  Standard Time has PM aplenty.  Like that word, aplenty.  Me to.  😉  PM aplenty.

 

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Homemade Products Don’t Sell

Here’s just a quick reminder that homemade products stick out like a sore thumb.  Have you ever encountered a product that was clearly not professionally produced?  They just look awful, and one look at them screams, “Homemade!” or “Unprofessional!”  It doesn’t take long for consumers to sniff you out and flee.

Epic Fail

This past weekend, my wife and I stayed at a little ‘mom and pop’ motel in a little town in Colorado.  With one step into the room, I got a good reminder of this issue.  (See the pics below from my crap phone)  The entertainment cabinet was hand-painted, and looked awful.  I nearly fled the room, but decided the cost was cheap enough to entice me to stay.  It turned out fine.  But ugly little piece of artwork really drove this point home to me.

Consumers do not like hand-crafted products.

Epic Fail 

Let’s face it… we live in a consumer-oriented world.  Almost every product we touch is machine made, and professionally crafted for maximum emotional indulgence.  Think about the indulgent products you use on a daily basis: $50,000 automobiles… iPhones… stylish eyeglasses… jewelry… and more.  Every product we use it slick and well-designed.  So consumers are used to those kinds of products.  Now slap and homemade software product in front of them, and watch them flee!  Or a poorly polished plastic drinking cup… or any other product you can imagine.  Consumers expect high quality.

This issue is especially true in software, where programmers are sometimes responsible for developing the entire product from code to help files to graphics.  Software developers just don’t have the talents for all those jobs, and it’s very obvious when they try.  The results are a lot like the Riviera Motel.  Can you guess where it’s located?

Epic Fail

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You Can Never Leave Your First Love

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

— Henry Ford

That has certainly been true in my life.  To me, business has been something deeply ingrained in my life.  For many years, I wrote code on Christmas Day, New Years Day, Independance Day, and many other holidays.

Yes, I loved it that much.

I would do events I called “24-hour weekends” where I would start coding at 7 AM each morning and go straight until 7 PM on both Saturday and Sunday — two twelve hours days.  And then I would resume my normal 60-hour week on Monday morning at 5:30 AM.  That’s how much I loved my business.

Things have changed a little since I’ve gotten older.  Economic downturns turn you hard.  Turn you bitter.  Make you cynical.  And you say, “What good was all that work?”  So yes… I’ve had times where I’ve quit and vowed never to do that again.  I’ve actually quit my business several times.  But like a dog to his vomit, I’ve always returned.  And after doing that a dozen times, I guess I’m here for the duration — a lifer.

I still love my business.  The current economic doldrums put a severe throttle on my work efforts.  It’s awfully hard to put your life into something (and that’s what Henry was really saying in the quote above) when customers don’t reciprocate with any degree of appreciation.  But I still work hard.  I might even pull a few of those 24-hour weekends from time to time just to remind myself of the love I still have for my business.

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All Your Eggs in One Basket

Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.

— Andrew Carnegie

I love that quote!  It speaks of focus and single-mindedness.  Those are qualities the project team can do well to learn.

There is a “magic” that occurs when the project team is single-minded with a burning goal on all their minds.  I’ll try to articulate the experience, as I have had been in the middle of it several times.  The closest parallel I can relate to is the focus of war.  Many speak of the chaos of war, but there is also a singular focus that it brings upon the average soldier.  And that focus is intoxicating.  Think of the Confederate army under General Robert E. Lee in 1861.  Those gray-clad boys fought for a cause!  It was the cause of freedom from government tyranny.  With such a cause, they would endure some of the most grueling warfare known to man – starvation, slaughter, and privations as yet unknown to Americans.  It was all for the “cause.”

The same was true of GI’s during the Second World War.  Those soldiers knew the cause was the defeat of Hitler and the unconditional surrender of Germany.  Everyone focused on the same goal, whether on the battlefield or at home.  It was one singular goal everyone could focus on.

This happens in the engineering world from time to time.  Underdog companies focus on one goal of building that killer product that will change the industry.  For the most part everyone speaks the same “language.”  It is the language of winning… of succeeding regardless of the hurdles… of performing their very best, if only once in their lifetimes.

People want causes.  It gives them one good thing to fight for that’s worthwhile and lasting.  Think about it… without something truly worthwhile we are just marking time through life.  Nobody wants that.  They want their lives to mean something.

All this is wrapped up in Andrew Carnegie’s statement above.  He is describing an industry focus that consumes everyone in its path.  In Carnegie’s case, that was the manufacturing of steel, and the goal of commodity pricing that could supply the world.

Can you find a cause like that for your business?  If so, you will have all the energies of all your employees focused on success.  And they will thank you for a cause to believe in.

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Project Management Doesn’t Have to be Hardcore

When most people think of project management, they think of crusty PMI propeller-heads sitting in a back office analyzing complex columns of project metrics and arriving at lofty strategic conclusions.  (Did I pitch that nerdy enough?)  In other words, project management is out of most people’s realm of understanding.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Consider a simpler model, as demonstrated by the videos below.  The stuff I’m seeing here is simple – something any average manager can wrap their brains around.

 

How to Read a Gantt Chart:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-GZLfFPWvI

Project Management:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E26M3Igh204

Resource Allocation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-qfsuft6Ak

 

Really, this is pretty simple project management.  From what I see, you’ve got a simple hierarchy of tasks that employees can track time to.  For each task you set up an estimated duration that you think the task will take.  Then you release it to the wild for employees to enter time against.  When they do, it puts the actual work into the task so you can compare it with the estimates.  Pretty simple so far… no propeller beanies required.

Another video showed how you can give each task a starting date that tells when employees should work on the task.  Since you have a duration for each task, and you have a proposed starting date, you can then see how much work has piled up for any given employees.  After all, you are telling how long and when his work should occur.  The video shows a nice graph telling how much work is scheduled for each time period (week, month, or quarter).  It may have a fancy name (resource allocation) but it’s really pretty simple from my perspective.

Why not give these tools a try?  You don’t have to be a propeller-head to set up a few tasks and start tracking time to them.  You don’ t need a degree in project management or sit in a PMO office with all the bean counters.  To me, this looks like project management for the non-project managers.

You don’t have to be hardcore to manage a few tasks.  Give it a try!

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Why Use a Timesheet?

If you’re a consulting or contracting company, the answer to that question is a no-brainer.  Or so says the video below.  In this video, the author asserts that consulting companies absolutely must use a timesheet for the job.  I tend to agree.  Consulting has become so complex, and the margins so slim that you can’t afford to lose a single hour of billable time.

Consultants regularly check their utilization rates to make sure they are making money.  Utilization is the ration of billable to scheduled hours for the employee.  For example, if the employee is scheduled for 40 hours and only works 35, then he is only 88% utilized.  And because he hasn’t worked the full 40, he is not billing as many hours as possible.  Therefore, his effective billing rate is lower than what the company actually charges for his work.

Here’s an example of a poor effective billing rate.  Suppose a consultant bills at $100 per hour.  But he only gets 10 hours per week of billable work.  His effective billing rate is now only $25 per scheduled hour.  And if you miss any of those hours, the rate goes down.  So using a timesheet to collect and account for all the billable time is probably a no-brainer.

 

Manufacturing companies like to track project hours using a timesheet.  It allows them to connect with their employees and see where their time is going.  But it has more value than that.  Manufacturers who track projects want to improve their deliverable schedules, milestone predictions, and task duration estimates.  This obviously lends credibility to their project management efforts.  The only way to get good project task estimates is to use a timesheet.  They must collect actual employee hours so those hours can be compared with the original estimates.

And finally, even if you are not a services-based company that tracks time for client billing, and you are not a manufacturing company that tracks project management metrics, you may still just want to see employee status and weekly hours.  That’s a good enough reason to use a timesheet.  Simply keeping an eye on employee activities is a worthwhile management practice, even if you don’t have a hard reason to use a timesheet.

All these reasons are illustrated in a nice little YouTube video.  Check out the ScoutwestInc channel for additional timesheet videos.  Some of them make a lot of sense.

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When to Re-baseline Your Project

Baselining is the act of recording your original project estimates so you can compare them to actual results at a later time.  It is also the platform from which the project is conducted.  In other words, the baseline contains schedule and cost numbers used by the project team throughout the entire process.  By baselining the project, you are laying the foundation on which the project will rise.  That’s a nice thing to have.  Employees want a good solid plan that doesn’t wander from whim to social whim.  They want a visible goal that isn’t ducking and weaving out of sight every week.  Such a goal offers reassurance and confidence for success.  A moving target is the worst motivation killer known to man.

But sometimes you just need to start over.

Yes, a moving target is a sure killer.  But there are times when the baseline is just crap.  The schedule has become irrelevant, costs are laughable, and the project team is floundering in a sea of mud.  Nothing is going as planned.  Designers are throwing in new requirements that were heretofore unheard of.  Executives are MIA.  And managers have you working 80 hour weeks to hit a target they have no clue of the purpose of.  Nobody’s admitting they’re stupid, but it’s obvious everybody is.  It’s only years later that everyone can look back and shake their heads at the calamity.  But while you’re in the midst of it, you just keep buggering on.

It is those times that executives, or maybe a strong-willed project manager needs to step in and call a hiatus.  But who’s got the guts for that.  Again, you’ve got to be a strong person to blow the whistle and wave your arms.  But if you can recognize the signals, a re-baselining during a mess like this may be your only option.

I was on a two-year software death-march like this.  It was a disaster.  Nobody knew the warning signs.  Nobody blew the whistle.  Nobody re-baselined.  The product failed six months after release, which was at that time a year overdue and marketplace irrelevant.  It was the worst project I was ever on.

Here is a good rule of thumb for knowing when to rebaseline:

Baseline the project if you have missed over half your scheduled targets in the last six months.

Have you missed a few end-to-end tests?  Missed a customer drop or two?  How about a major milestone?  Missed a target feature?  These are the warning signs.  Again, if you have missed over half your targets in the last six months, rebaseline.  Don’t try to figure it out, just baseline the project again.

In fact, in cases like that above I would suggest cutting the scope in half.  Cut the project into smaller phases.  Get the schedule down to visible goals.  And if anybody disputes them, cut them again.  And then again.  You must have realistic goals or you will fail every time.

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I Quit!

I’ve decided to quit the software development and project management biz to get into the more lucrative, albeit illegal spam biz.  I could spend a billion spams a day!  If you’ve been following my blog, don’t dispair.  You’ll still hear from me, just in the form of men’s health emails.  (That’s a joke, folks!)

CIO Insight did a short piece on eleven reasons to quit your job.  See the full story here.  It’s so funny!

http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Careers/11-Outrageous-Reasons-to-Quit-Your-Job-758179/

Do you have a trust fund?  That’s a good reason to quit.  What about if you are making too much money and don’t feel you deserve it.  Well then just quit!  Those are just a few good ones from the survey CIO Insight did.

Prototype

CIO Insight

Actually, those are great reasons.  In fact, all the items on the list are great – for the employer, that is.  That’s because you don’t want a person like that on your team.  If they’ll quit because they can’t get up in the morning or there’s a must-see sporting event one day, then you can live without that person.  Reasons for quitting tell you a lot about a person.  It’s a window into their true character.

But wait a minute…  You want to know their character before you hire them.  Oh, yeah…

The time to test a person’s character is before you add them to your project team – during the interview and selection process.  That means you must either be a really good judge of character, or use a test to weed out the deadbeats.

During my career, employers have used multiple interviewers.  On “interview day” you go from office to office talking to a half dozen team members.  Those team members report back to the HR department with a score, and anecdotal feelings about your “team player” aptitude.  Of course, prospective employees are on their best behavior during such sessions, so you can’t get any dirt on them.  But if your team members are each good judges of character, you’ll have a good idea what you’re dealing with.

One employer put me in from of an impossible-to-finish test.  They said I had two hours to compete it, and that I should answer as many questions as I could.  Problem is, the test would take any normal person four hours to complete.  So what’s a guy to do?  Rush through it, scribbling down answers as fast ask you can?  Or take it slow and easy, answering only the ones you know you’ll get right?  Clearly this was a trick test to see how a person reacts when given too much work to complete in a given time period.  Will they make a big mess of the job by rushing?  Or are the smooth and level-headed.  A test like this will reveal their true character.

Another idea is to take them out to lunch and gang up on them.  See how they react in different settings.  What comes out of their mouth when they aren’t guarding it so closely?  Ask them to gossip about the worst boss they ever had.  Do they take the bait and spill their guts?  Or do they say all their bosses were saints?  You could ask them to rat out their worse coworker.  Same trick…  Do they partake in vicious gossip about their previous workplace?  If so, it tells you that they’ll do the same at your company.  They may even say similar things about you.  Or they may walk off the job to join a rock band!

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That’s Where Experience Comes In

Recently, I overheard a senior project team member reminding a junior software developer to make sure his code built and could be checked in every day. He reminded the junior coder that we now have more coders on the project, and that leaving files checked out for multiple days put others in a difficult position. They could not get his changes until he checked it in, and long delays held up forward progress of the project.

That conversation got me thinking about all the little things you learn throughout the years. Here are some more to consider.
A few things experience has taught me:
• Check your code in often
• Don’t go dark for long periods of time
• Make yourself accessible
• Research everything you don’t know the meaning of
• Try new things
• Don’t get locked into legacy products
• Upgrade your development environment often
• Get a new development machine every three years
• Network with team members
• Answer every email you get, and in timely manner
• Get on Skype
• Blog often
• Re-read your emails before sending
• Let no bug survive
• Don’t be an obstruction to others
• Clear obstructions for those who work with you
• Take a vocabulary class
• Use good grammar and punctuation, not IM slang
• Decline unproductive meetings
• Produce a lot of code
• Design before you code
• Get peer feedback
• Learn to spell
• Work on communication skills
• Make a lot of friends

Got something to add? Become a contributor and add your comments below. I’d love to hear them!