Companies that don’t track hours spent on projects are
putting their project management software on borrowed time.
Employee or staff time is a critical component of project
cost. Without careful tracking of hours, a company cannot know the true cost of
a project or calculate the return on investment (ROI) for it.
In addition, companies must track time and expenses to be
able to generate meaningful reports. Executives expect in-depth reports from
project management software and are not likely to see the value of software
that doesn’t produce them. They likely will blame the software and eventually
ax it out of the budget.
Departments of mid-sized companies should take a lesson
from the Fortune 500 and force their employees to track time as it is put
toward projects. Because they’re public, Fortune 500 companies have a fiduciary
responsibility to their stockholders. But smaller companies have four good
reasons to follow the protocol of these leaders:
1) Employees who track time can see their
accomplishments in hard numbers, boosting morale;
2) Time tracking enables employees to show management
how much time projects actually take; this can help them guide management in
assigning manageable work loads.
3) Time tracking provides critical information for
making good decisions about the type and skill level of employees required to
maximize ROI;
4) Time tracking enables departments and organizations
to capitalize upon time and maximize profit per project.
Employees might resist time tracking at first. But they
will meet the mandate, grow comfortable with it, and, eventually, appreciate
the opportunity to see their own progress while giving management an important
tool to manage workloads.
By tracking time and expenses, organizations can maximize
their investments both in their project management systems and in their
projects, period.
“It’s Time to Track the Hours” is based on an article
by Adam Torres, managing partner and founder of TeamDynamix.
