6 Things you can do with Orangescrum’s Time Tracking Feature

People’s behaviour stats show that they actually use 60% or less of available work time. Even though they are physically at work five days a week, they are only productively using three days. So you pay almost 70% extra wage for getting things done.

How does it happen? How to stop it?

Let’s get into the roots first. Reasons…

1-Inability to Track Time on Job:

Ironically we have a “To- Do” List but do not ever track or plan the time for this list. It is important for everyone to complete the tasks at hand on time, so it’s essential to map Time required/spent against desired outcomes to stay productive and competitive. But, how we do it? Inaccurate task time estimates account for 27% of project failures.

Solution: A handy timer at our side that keep tracks time while we focus on our tasks. Activate the Timer from the Quick Links, select the project & task; your time tracking on the task is automated. You can pause and start your Timer and the break time gets calculated automatically to ensure your time spent is recorded accurately. Now, organize your time effortlessly and be more productive.

2-No way to map Resource utilization:

One thing we have learnt the hard way from managing projects is – “everything is scarce but you – resources, time and money”. (Hurts isn’t it!!)

Most organizations and teams do not have a process to distinctly map their resources to tasks and time. I.e. which resource is utilized where and how much…

We are absolutely clueless about our own as well as the team’s efficiency. This deadly inefficient factor contributes to 60% failure in all projects. Resource dependency contributes to 25% of project failures.

Solution:

The Orangescrum Time Log directly feeds into the Resource Utilization available in the Analytics section. You get a host of intuitive filters to choose from to get accurate info at any desired level.

You can point to a specific date, a specific resource, task or project to identify the time consumed by these buckets.

An interactive pie-chart view provides day wise granular info on the no of tasks worked, resources who worked on these tasks and how much time they spent on these for quick tracking and reference.

A crisp and concise view to identify any time leakages, process gaps or repetitive tasks so that you can plug them in time to save time and improve project efficiency across the board.

3-Faulty Time Management:

Project Managers, developers, designers, consultants, architects you name it… are always stretched for time. Getting more done does not automatically mean that you are managing your time effectively.

There are always residual tasks that impact your operations and their performance while disrupting the overall efficiency of your business.

Inaccurate time estimates throw you off-track even before you start the project!

Solution:

Consistent use of the Time Log provides you with enough foresight to plan and budget your projects accurately.

You have the knowhow on multitude of tasks to define timelines that are not heavy on your team and are acceptable to your clients at the same time.

You easily identify your teams’ strengths/weaknesses, availability, flow of tasks leading to a well suited project flow.

In the end gift yourself the freedom to organize your house in order that furthers your plan while ensuring absolute project success.

In no time you are an astute time manager with happy teams and happy customers. Victory for all!

4-Difficulty in billing:

Unless you have visibility on your time spent, you cannot bill your clients. Simple!

We live in a digitally overwhelmed world where for every task we spin an app, a tool or whatever is available without realizing in the end it is “us” who has to manage them all.

And true to this, most organizations manage their time and invoicing in disparate tools at times with minimal interaction between the two.

Needless to mention the commotion this creates when it comes to maintaining transparency with your contractors, 3rd party vendors, partners, technology service providers and most importantly your customers.

Solution:

Time log entries in Orangescrum are directly linked to the Invoice thereby auto- generating Invoices without missing a single billable minute. Every minute spent is linked to the cost and rightly so.

Orangescrum lets you define billable and non-billable work that augurs well for transparent invoicing. You can also have your clients be part of your project management in Orangescrum boosting customer confidence.

In a way you build invoices while you track time. All you do is select, generate and send.

No wonder Benjamin Franklin was right – Time is Money!

Quickly and effortlessly you get thing done in less time. No extra manpower or wage and no loss of time. Incredible!

5-Stressful environment:

Lack of clarity around a project schedule is the harshest thing you can inflict on your teams.  If the teams do not know what is due when, it’s easy to steer away from the goal. This creates a lot of uncertainty and uneasiness within the teams with a direct impact on their morale and productivity.   

Add to it an ever-changing goal and you have the perfect storm and a rudderless ship.

Confusion always leads to chaos. Chaos never deliver results!

Solution:

Organizing and simplifying your work is the principle Orangescrum thrives on. The well thought-out project-task-resource-time mapping renders efficiency at all levels no matter how geographically dispersed.

You can enter task times manually, use the timer and post comments on your time spent and make it absolutely visible to project participants enabling greater team work.

Your team members know where you are and thus both of you can shift gears to complement each other in the best interest of the project.

It allows better collaboration, planning and resolution to any issues that arise…. Most importantly in time to avoid potential damage to your team morale and their ability to work as a team.

6- Missed deadlines, financial losses, stressed relationships:

Business is successful when delivered on time. Time and resource management are critical success factors to sustain good client relationship and trust..

Solution: Using the time tracking feature you actually identify the loose ends (the errant resources in other words), further the feature helps to calculate the resource-productivity-time effectively. This helps to take decisions quicker and assign the next task(s) in the pipeline realistically.

Measure it, improve on it, and take control of your time.

Like one of our satisfied customer stated;

“The timelog and task management are very helpful in managing the projects and billing the clients. Further, the invoice add-on is heavenly boon, which reduced most of our work! We used MS Excel for managing time log, now, we don’t! we use orangescrum timelog add-on to manage time. Now, we no more use MS word to export our invoices. We do it in a click!”

Bala M L, Patent Consultant IP Firm, India

It’s never too late to take the right decision. It’s time to improve your employees’ productivity. Incorporate Orangescrum in your process and set a culture in place right away to help employees yield more to generate better.

Time and tide waits for none. It’s time to make a run – time for Orangescrum’s Time Tracking Feature.

Sign up – Orangescrum Cloud to try-out this feature.

For community users, check out the Time Log Add-on