One task that seems to bring people together in mutual dislike is time tracking. Why is that? What if your organization requires you and your team to track your project efforts on a timesheet? In this article, I’ll explore some of the reasons why project teams hate time tracking and what a project manager can do to encourage it.
Here’s a pro-tip, right off the bat: most of the time, you and your project team will be using time tracking software. Trust me: this is way better than an Excel spreadsheet or a paper timesheet. Choosing a user-friendly option goes a long way in getting your team to actually use it—more on that later!
What Is Time Tracking And Why Do Teams Do It?
Project teams engage in time tracking for various reasons. These reasons often align with organizational goals, project management needs, and efficiency considerations.
Apart from the basic reason “I hate it, but someone told me to do it”, here are some common reasons why teams implement employee time tracking:
- Better billing and client management: For organizations and agencies that bill clients based on time spent on projects, keeping track of billable hours through time tracking is essential for accurate invoicing. It provides a clear and transparent record of the time spent on client work. This can help to justify costs and maintain client relationships.
- More accurate project estimates: Time tracking is often used to monitor and manage the time spent on various tasks and activities. This helps in estimating how much time similar tasks might take in future projects, making project planning more accurate. Time tracking can also be used in project management to check the accuracy of estimates and to make adjustments if estimates appear to be off. It may also help to identify risks that may affect your project outcomes.
- Improved resource allocation: Time tracking allows project teams to understand how resources, including each team member’s time and skills, are distributed across the project. This information is valuable for optimizing resource allocation and ensuring that workloads are balanced, and that team members are not overloaded or under-utilized, which can contribute to burnout. This might involve allocation methods like reassigning tasks to other team members, bringing on additional team members or potentially freelancers, or extending task or project timelines.
- Contributes to process and workflow improvement: Time tracking data can be analyzed to identify opportunities for process and workflow improvements. Project managers can identify patterns, assess the effectiveness of processes and workflows according to predefined metrics, and make data-driven decisions to enhance overall efficiency. For example, you might notice multiple team members spending a lot of time on the same task, which means you need to find a way to reduce the amount of time they’re spending or remove a blocker that’s impacting them.
Why Do Teams Hate Time Tracking?
1. Perceived Micromanagement
No one likes to feel like they are being watched. The feeling of having ‘big brother’ watching over you during every minute of your working hours makes people feel uncomfortable.
Time tracking can be perceived as a form of micromanagement where employees feel that their every move is being monitored and watched. This can lead to a lack of trust, demotivation, and a negative work environment and culture.
2. Punishment for Inaccurate Estimates
Project teams (and especially agile project teams) may dislike time tracking if tracked time is measured against work estimates. If project teams are asked to provide an estimate for the planned effort and duration, they might feel that time tracking is a way to track the accuracy of their estimates.
Team members might worry that they will be held accountable or punished for providing an inaccurate estimate if they’re off. This can be especially problematic for teams working on creative or research & development projects.
3. Unwanted Administrative Task
No one likes administrative ‘busy-work’ tasks. Project team members might see time tracking as an additional administrative task that takes time away from their actual work. If the process of tracking one’s time is cumbersome or requires a significant amount of time and effort, this causes frustration.
4. Lack of Transparency and Trust
If the purpose behind time tracking is not effectively communicated, or if the use of data that’s been tracked is not transparent, employees may question the value and necessity of the process. This can create a toxic culture where employees may feel that they are not trusted to do their work. This is not the type of culture or environment that anyone would like to work in.
Why Is Time Tracking For Project Teams Important?
Time tracking can be very important for a project. The project manager may wish teams to track time for a number of reasons.
Here are some common benefits of time tracking for teams:
- Provides productivity insights: Time tracking can be used to analyze team and individual employee productivity. By understanding how time and effort is spent, you can identify bottlenecks, gaps, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement. This data-driven approach can inform strategies and plans to enhance overall productivity and employee morale.
- Helps control costs: Time tracking assists in controlling costs by providing insights into the actual time, effort, and money spent on projects. This information is crucial for budgeting accurately and avoiding cost overruns. This is especially important for projects that have agreed on a fixed project cost (or are using a fixed-price contract) with customers, or those that need to stay within budget parameters set by a client.
- Ensures compliance with legal and contractual obligations: In some cases, compliance, legal, or contractual agreements may necessitate time tracking. Time tracking ensures work is conducted in accordance with established standards and guidelines for projects that have regulatory or compliance requirements that mandate time tracking. This is often the case in consulting, legal services, and other professional fields where clients require detailed records of employee work performed.
- Improved time management: Team members will be able to see how they spend their time, and determine whether they are spending too much time (or not enough time) on certain tasks. With the opportunity to review their own time data at the end of the day or week, say, team members can adjust the time and effort they’re putting into different projects or tasks to increase profitability.
4 Ways Project Managers Can Get The Team On Board With Time Tracking
Getting a project team onboard with time tracking can be a delicate process that requires effective communication strategies, clear benefits, and a supportive approach. Here are some strategies that you can use to encourage your team to embrace time tracking:
1. Explain The Purpose of Time Tracking
The first step in getting your team on board is to clearly communicate the reasons behind implementing time tracking. Emphasize that it is not about micromanaging but rather about understanding how time is spent to improve efficiency and productivity. As the project manager, you can help explain the purpose by highlighting the benefits for both the team and the organization.
2. Link Time Tracking to Goals
The second step is to connect time tracking with the project team’s overall goals and objectives. When team members see how their time contributes to the achievement of larger goals (or the ‘bigger picture’), they may be more motivated to track their time accurately. This also has the benefit of ensuring that your team members also have an understanding of the project and organization’s goals and objectives.
3. Pick User-Friendly Tools
If you know your team is reluctant to track their time, why pick a difficult and hard-to-use tool? To encourage your team to do it, select a time tracking app that is easy to use and integrates seamlessly into the team’s workflow. If the tools are user-friendly and require minimal effort, team members are more likely to adopt them without you having to ask or remind them.
Keep an eye out for time tracking tools with functionalities that allow you and your team to automate time tracking (ex. starting a time clock when opening a specific tab), and integrations with your project management software or other invoicing software to create a cohesive time tracking system.
4. Lead by Example
How are you going to encourage people to do something if you don’t do it yourself? As the project manager, you should lead by example and demonstrate a commitment to time tracking. When project team members see that leaders are actively participating, it sets a positive tone for the entire team. This will encourage others to follow suit.
About Christina Sookram
https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/author/sookramchristina/
With over 15 years of corporate experience as a project manager, Christina Sookram is an experienced project leader and educator. She has provided project leadership experience at some of Canada’s largest technology companies. She has subject matter expertise in both waterfall and agile project delivery and product management functions with a focus on Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe® agile methodologies. A successful entrepreneur, Christina founded CNS Project Consulting Inc in 2020 to help clients in the IT, education and Web3 industries. Christina is also an instructor at Wilfrid Laurier University and OCAD University where she enjoys sharing her love of all things project management with students.
This article originally appeared on Thedigitalprojectmanager.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org
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Committing of the 7 Deadly Sins Of Product Design Without Even Knowing It? How to Tell
At this point in our timeline, there is absolutely no excuse for poor product design. In the ever-competitive world of software products, getting your UI and UX design right is non-negotiable. Even if you have great technology that is able to solve the pain points of your users, poor UX will send users running from your product—either because they couldn’t figure out how to use it, or frankly, because they hate it.
Brace yourself; I’m about to deliver some “tough love” on how not to do UX by listing the seven deadly sins of product design and exposing some of the worst offenders.
Antonio_Diaz/iStock
One of my most pleasant childhood memories is when my sister and I were decorating the Christmas tree. As soon as we were done, we would look at it in awe as it was something absolutely gorgeous to us. Well, at least that’s how we saw it. What did it look like in real life? Something like this.
I assume you know where I’m going with this. Unlike the Christmas tree that you really want your kids to decorate however their heart desires, your UI and UX should not look like a huge mess of elements and colors scattered all over the place.
Now, let’s look at a real-life product that looks like a “Christmas tree.”
Just look at the photo above for a moment and try to explain to me what this product is about. I’m sure you got lost in the UI and could not figure it out for a while either. There are just too many things happening on this screen, it’s basically impossible to comprehend where you are and what you should be doing.
The issues I see with this interface include:
- Overuse of color: Color is a powerful tool in the hands of crafty product designers, as they can lead users in the right direction. However, if you have too much color in your UI, it weakens this power and every colored element starts to compete for attention.
- Overload of CTAs: What’s the most important thing that I should be clicking on now? Honestly, I have no idea—there are buttons all over the place.
- Confusing Layout: So, basically, the screen is divided into three columns, where the center one has two tabs and there is also a large timeline section at the bottom. The designers have tried to squeeze in as many things as they could into a single screen.
Do This Instead
This is a case of trying to approach UX by creating some sort of order out of a ton of information. Instead, think of your UX as a map for the behavior you want from your users. It’s product design 101 that color, CTAs, and layout should work together to direct your user to take the right next steps.
The Product Manager
Visual hierarchy refers to the arrangement of elements on your UI in a way that clearly conveys the hierarchical relationship between them.
The article you are reading now, for instance, has a clear visual hierarchy as the title is in large type at the top, the subheadings are in smaller type than the title but much bolder than the paragraphs, and so forth.
In both cases, we highlight the titles by either making them larger or bolder—clearly indicating that the paragraphs are about the topics stated in each corresponding subheading.
Visual hierarchy is a great way to organize your UI and make it easy to navigate. The absence of it, however, is a great way to make your users struggle to find their way through your interface.
One of the prominent failures of visual hierarchy that annoys me on a daily basis is the answers section of Quora.
In order to encourage people to browse other questions and stay on their website longer, Quora has also included questions and answers that are related to the question that you are currently browsing.
I don’t mind it. It’s an existing user behavior and Quora has found an organic way to benefit from it.
I do mind, however, the way they have designed these related questions/answers. They look nearly identical to the real answers on the page and lack a visual hierarchy. Look at the screenshot above and tell me which one is an answer and which is a related question. You really have to read slowly to catch it.
Do This Instead
Ideally, the related questions would be less prominent on the UI and be lower than the main answers in terms of their visual hierarchy (e.g. have a grayish background instead of a white one).
The Product Manager
I know, I know, Craigslist has a horribly-outdated UI and it still operates perfectly fine. But it’s an exception to the rule and you should not think that it is still just dandy to have something like that in 2023.
The problem is that, unlike Craigslist, your product will not be super popular and does not have a universally-recognized brand. Therefore, if people saw something outdated when visiting your website or using your application – they will simply not take you seriously. However, you always have the chance to get recognized by your creative logo design and branding.
Sadly, sometimes it is the most “serious” organizations that are guilty of committing this sin.
I had a chance to collaborate with the Central Bank of Armenia a couple of years ago. They have some of the most talented financial analysts and monetary policy experts out there. Moreover, the president of this institution (a Harvard Graduate) used to be my professor and he is arguably the smartest person I have met in my life.
The website of the Central Bank, however, looks so bad that it will be hard for you to believe that this is a highly prominent organization with super-talented staff.
The Product Manager
In the world of UX, “dark patterns” are user journeys and UI elements that misinform the user and lead them into performing an action that they are not aware of.
There is a certain e-commerce shop with an orange arrow-shaped logo that is especially “famous” for implementing dark patterns. They’re guilty of this to the point that there are ongoing complaints and investigations against them for not following FCC rules.
One of the most famous user experiences that falls under this category is the way you’re supposed to cancel a Prime Membership.
To be fair, I think it is still a good idea to ask your users for feedback when they cancel their paid subscription or even to offer them a “please don’t go” discount. But you need to respect the time and the patience of your users.
Please take into consideration that the people who want to cancel your subscription are most likely annoyed or unhappy with you. So, making it difficult for them to cancel will make them even more angry (and you can forget about the prospect of bringing them back someday in the future).
If you try to cancel your Prime Membership, for instance, Amazon will ask you to reconsider.
I’m ok with this screen, everybody does it.
However, I am not ok with the fact that you will need to confirm your selection two(!) more times in order to cancel (you’re kidding me, right?). Moreover, the wording and colors that they use for their CTAs are tailored to make it hard for you to find the one that will cancel the membership instead of keeping it.
Do This Instead
Don’t try to fool your users into action that is contrary to their intent, or try to “wear them down” by making it excessively hard to cancel. People are smart enough to know that you’re doing it on purpose, and it will just make your competitors look more attractive. Instead, take a brief survey on the reason they’re leaving you and make the process efficient while leaving the door open to return.
The Product Manager
Forms are one of the fundamental elements of websites and one of the first things that developers learn to build and designers learn to, well, design.
Making great user experience for forms is probably one of the most discussed topics among designers and you can find best practices, guides, and lessons for it pretty much everywhere.
Considering the prevalence of educational materials on forms and the importance of making them right (it will directly affect your acquisition and other key metrics after all), I’d argue that not following the established UX best practices for forms is a sin.
Now, let me give you an example of bad product design for forms.
I can’t even look at this page without my eyes stinging. There are just so many things wrong here. To name a few:
Improper use of whitespace: Why do you need the field names to be so far away from the fields themselves? Why are you using an entire block for placing two tiny toggles for pickup and delivery? You can create a form containing all of the information here that is at least 4x smaller and much easier to scan.
Improper formatting of fields: There is a telephone field where the digits you type will not appear in the format of a phone number (e.g. +1 (555) 123-1234) to make it easier to read. This is something so common that the majority of design tools even have ready components for it.
Absence of placeholder: You can barely notice that there is a text field in the “Additional Delivery Instructions” section. Moreover, I am not sure what you are supposed to write there. Great form UX always assumes the presence of placeholders that give you a hint, like “Please leave package on front porch.”
Do This Instead
The remedies for each of these problems are pretty self-evident, but this is a case where it just seems like the only people who tested this form are the ones who built it. The designers would have been well-served to get some real user feedback on this UX before launching it.
The Product Manager
The next sin I want to talk about is a continuation of the previous one. Forms are not the only UI elements in your product that should follow well-established conventions and best practices. There are also other common elements like toggles, check boxes, and others.
In fact, users already have established mental models for the way each of these elements work and you need to make sure that you are using them the right way.
Here are a couple of examples of what these elements are created for and how not to use them right:
Toggles: This element will show you a “boolean” state (like something being On/Off or Active/Inactive). They are great for showing your users the status of the Bluetooth antenna in their smartphone and letting them turn it on or off.
In the previous form, however, there are two toggles that let the user choose between pickup and delivery.
If you think about this for a moment, you’ll have thought about it longer than the designer did. These toggles means that you need to turn “pickup” OFF and “delivery” ON to select the “delivery” option! They could have used radio buttons. I honestly wonder what happens if a user toggles them both on at the same time.
Select Menus Without Filtering: Being one of the oldest elements to appear on websites, select menus are still popular and highly user-friendly if used correctly.
Do This Instead
The best practice dictates that you should use a select menu for the cases when the user needs to pick a single option from a list that is 5-15 options long. If there are fewer than 5 options, then you should go for radio buttons.
In case there is an extensive list of options to select from (e.g. 50 U.S. states or ~200 countries), you will need to add filtering to your select menu. Otherwise, your user will have to scroll through that long list in order to find the option they want.
The Product Manager
Finally, the greatest sin of them all: creating a new product with a UX design that does not fit the needs and interests of your users. This is just a recipe for failure.
Do This Instead
Good product design process always starts with user research. Unless you know who your users are and what they need, no matter how beautiful of a user interface you create, you will most certainly end up with a poorly-designed product.
I know that user research is not an easy task. After all, it took Apple years of user testing to achieve an exceptional level of usability in both the industrial design and user experience of their iPhone. However, believe me, it is the single most impactful piece of work that you can do to ensure the success of your product.
pixdeluxe / iStock
If you work building websites, you are in a better starting position. Why? Because web design tools normally offer templates that already avoid some of the sins listed here. However, no matter if you are a startup developing digital products or an enterprise that builds physical ones (like keyboards or motion sensors), it is actually quite easy to avoid poor design.
As long as your product development process focuses on the needs and pain points of your users and you are using the right product design software, you will be able to avoid significant design flaws and ending up with a badly designed product.
I hope these examples made you feel better about your own products, or at least gave you a chuckle.
nd3000/istockphoto
Deagreez / istockphoto
Featured Image Credit: AndreyPopov/Istockphoto.
