Last year I had a chance to interview Curt Finch, CEO of Journyx Inc. - a company that develops time tracking software - and have been interested in other's thoughts on the subject of tracking time as it relates to project management. I recently read a post at Better Projects discussing the value of time  tracking: Good reasons to do time tracking and wanted to share this excerpt:

There are many reasons that time tracking is important. In order to make strategic decisions, you need data. The only place to get data that can be aggregated is to have the detail that rolls up. The types of decisions that have been made based on the time tracking data I've collected over the years include:

• Staffing - Several people avoided layoffs because I could show exactly what they were working on and how long they spent doing it. We also could show that we needed more people in order to do additional projects in the time frame management required it.
• Project delivery dates - Because we had good historical data on actual times vs. estimates, our estimates were given more credibility by management. Instead of management insisting on an unreasonable delivery date, they accepted ours.
• Planning when new projects could be started - When management saw that staff was fully loaded for the next few months, they reprioritized their projects to fit the staffing schedule.

Read more here: http://www.betterprojects.net/2008/02/good-reasons-to-do-time-tracking.html

It is easy to give in to the cry that tracking time is just a waste of time. But as the excerpt above shows, tracking time gives the savvy project manager an edge. You have data you can reference instead of an empty plea for time, people, money - whatever. Getting people to buy-in and reliably, consistently and honestly track their time is a big battle, but once a streamlined solution is implemented (and it doesn't have to be a weighty, tedius process), it's actually quite easy to keep going. In reality, as explained in the referenced post, people see value in tracking their time after they see how powerful the information gathered can be.

Note also that the post included a reference to a forthcoming post on "the mechanics of time tracking", which should also be interesting. Actually, I just checked and the post is up, so click on the highlighted link if interested. I just read it and it opens with this quite true statement "It isn't easy to manage the problem of getting people to do their time tracking." It reminds me of the answer Curt Finch gave to the question: Why do you think most companies fail to recognize the value of time when, as Franklin reminds us, "time is money" and "lost time is never found again"? His answer:

Curt: It's hard to collect time data, so people become discouraged after the first time they try.  Often they can't get the categories right, so they don't understand how to provide managers with the data that is needed, resulting in project failure.  Or they put 10,000 projects into a timesheet and it becomes too difficult for people to know what to choose.  These problems are all easily solvable if you're willing to work with experts who've already done this hundreds of times for a variety of industries and companies.

Managers often make the mistake of thinking, "It's just a timesheet, how hard can it be?"  For some groups, it is very easy.  Yet tracking time for multiple purposes at once—billing, payroll, project management—and doing it differently in different departments on one system is complex enough that it requires professional assistance.

 

Read more here: http://ravenyoung.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!17376F4C11A91E0E!3771.entry