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Lilith.C wrote: Log the time spent on logging the time and determine a percentage of total time spent. Of course, you have to log the time of logging the time and it becomes recursive.
Exactly, then there's the time going to the coffee machine and those times when team members want to come in and talk about nothing but just interesting enough to totally distract you...well you get the picture.
Have you ever just looked at someone and knew the wheel was turning but the hamster was dead?
Trying to understand the behavior of some people is like trying to smell the color 9.
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The board is just plain stupid. If someone (manager?) wants to see what everyone is working on when he enters the room he can but large TV and hook it up with agile JIRA dashboard - should be cheaper in a month or two considering all your trips to the board.
As for the JIRA itself.. well.. there have to be some kind of tracking where the money goes. The problem may start if client can see it as it may be sometimes hard to explain why what they see (!) as simple change took 3 days.
--
"My software never has bugs. It just develops random features."
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Seems like a terrible waste of time and effort. Have you considered logging the time spent on logging? That may result in a one way trip to the ext door or it may communicate that this is an inefficient process.
I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
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I once worked for a company that briefly wanted me to log everything in 15 minute increments and submit the log weekly. After the first week I turned my log in and my boss appeared in my office shortly thereafter. Seems he wanted to know why I had 4 hours logged as "logging time" for the week. I asked if he actually knew how long it took to check your watch every few minutes to see if 15 minutes had gone by, then write down what you did for that 15 minutes, then transcribe and summarize it at the end of a week.
They trashed the time logging after I explained the process to a few coworkers.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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And I once worked for a company that demanded that all employees PLAN their next 30 day activities IN ADVANCE in 15 MINUTE INCREMENTS! I asked the VP if he wanted me to plan (and then log) my bathroom breaks before asking him how anyone could possibly plan all of their next 15 minute work increments for 30 days in advanced. An extremely broken company that I am very happy I left!
- Grant
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Songshu Xinxu wrote: I stress again, we're a 7-man web development team
And therein lies the problem; men do not multi-task well.. you need a woman on the team to truly get multitasking done...
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But with women on the team the men won't do any (productive) work at all anymore 
It's an OO world.
public class SanderRossel : Lazy<Person>
{
public void DoWork()
{
throw new NotSupportedException();
}
}
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If the woman is an above average programmer, she can do all the work.
If she's not, but above average in looks, she can probably get the men to do all her work.
If she's average, she can probably keep everyone organized enough to do all the work.
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The manual board is seriously stupid if there is a digital system.
However, I work for a defense contractor and we must log our work to 6 minute increments. This must be logged daily for accounting and auditing purposes. We are billing the government after all.
I just keep notes when I change a task, mark the time, and continue working.
At the end of the day I fill out the reporting, which takes about 5 minutes, and I'm done. It didn't take long to get the hang of it and now it's not all that disruptive.
I'm sure there is a way to streamline your process so it seems less disruptive.
As others have said, whoever is funding the effort probably would like to see how the money is spent.
I wouldn't get too caught up in the process, and just make sure you do solid work.
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Welcome to corporate life. They just want to see where the money is being spent. It's not too bad if they don't get really anal about it, but then again most bean counters do.
That being said, I still don't like doing it. It's retarded, but I understand why it's done.
Jeremy Falcon
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I used Tiddlywiki, slightly modified, with the TaskTimer plugin. Bascially I click the button type a sentence then go on. Worked pretty well but I wasn't trying to track for billing purposes.
Jack of all trades, master of none, though often times better than master of one.
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Songshu Xinxu wrote: By hand.
Songshu Xinxu wrote: Am I a crybaby or is this genuinely as silly as it all seems?
Silly would be a nice understatement.
Songshu Xinxu wrote: let the developers do what they do best without having to watch the clock all
the time.
Ehr.. when done right, planning time is something that is beneficial. Using it against your developers means you're not making friends.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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I've worked in a number of places that try to do time logging - and usually have fought against it for its entire lack of usefulness.
First thing I did was write a small proggy (what we used to call Apps back in the day!) to log my time so I could click a button every time I did anything, type in some text, and then display it at the end of the day/week.
When I went to log my time, I had millionis of entries - 2 minutes going to the loo, time spent getting coffee or tea, talking to someone, having a meeting, responding to an email from the boss asking if I had updated my times etc. etc.
They soon had so much data it was entirely unmanageable.
There is, though, a very good reason for logging the approximate time spend on tasks - and that is to improve processes and estimation.
If a task was estimated as 1/2 day and actually takes significantly longer, it's useful to know why to prevent under-estimation in future.
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Jira is about time management and project costs.
The sticky notes are about communicating with other people.
Hmm.
I think I might see why developers think both are a waste of time.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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The process is sound, but you shouldn't be doing it by hand! There are plenty of programs that would do a much better job of keeping track of bug fixes and similar.
We use the Mantis bugtracker software. We haven't installed it ourselves, so I can't provide a link, but I'm sure it's not hard to look up. It does require some effort (and a server) to install, but it's much less painfull to use, works remotely without additional effort, and even lets you view the entire history of a given issue, in case it keeps popping up. There are other systems that may be commercial, may focus on other capabilities, and may be easier or harder to use or install. You just need to find the one that does the best job for you.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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I think they're asking you to waste your time. I can see the advantages of measuring the metrics however they must realise that pointless admin takes time.
I do record what I work on in a spreadsheet, however I do not include hours spent on a task. I record the tasks I work on for my own benefit as I am constantly switching and need to keep track of what types of work I do overall.
Simon Lee Shugar (Software Developer)
www.simonshugar.co.uk
"If something goes by a false name, would it mean that thing is fake? False by nature?" By Gilbert Durandil
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Pardon my comment, i am retired now... But I would never give a work to do to an enterprise wasting so much time doing things by HAND! Are U an IT firm?
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We did some time logging on one sprint but developers estimated how much time was spent on tasks like email, meetings, support, etc.
We found that development took up about 35% of the week.
Since then the number of meetings has shrunk dramatically and everyone manages email better.
I estimate that some 70% of the time is now spent in development and the team ( about the same size as yours) have become far more productive.
I try to note at the end of the day what I have done, since it will be needed for my performance review, but I try to ensure it takes no more than a minute or two. And then summarise ( again in 5 minutes) at the end of the month.
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That's asinine. Chuck the whiteboard.
Software Zen: delete this;
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In consulting industry, accurately logging time is a part of the business. Sometimes, in the case of payment dispute, a client may ask for a detailed log of hours spent on its project. In your case, writing note in both system and on whiteboard might not be for billing purpose only.
TOMZ_KV
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Purchase a 70 inch TV mount it where the sticky notes are and bring up the time management site.
Make sure its touch enabled.
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I feel your pain, replace PHP/Symfony2 with C#/Sharepoint (rant for another day) and add a Scrum Master who acts more like a project manager on a waterfall team and you've got my life. We're trying to get some dedicated team space in our building so we can put up a 32" screen and use that to display out JIRA "board" so we only have to update our tasks in one place but that's been "in the works" for over a year now. I understand why logging time to a task is important but I prefer to log time spent once the task is complete but that doesn't work so well when management values hours over story points for tracking (hence the waterfall feel to the "agile" team). I know there is a lot of documentation, whitepapers etc on combining waterfall and agile but, at least in my experience, it ends up feeling more like a bait-and-switch.
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First,
I hate time logging, but I have to do it. I bill up to 5 different clients every day,
depending one what I am working on. Many days are a blur, so you have to keep some kind of notes.
Luckily I have 1hr increments. 15 minutes would totally suck, and I would fight it.
Personally, I would do a brown bag lunch with the 7 guys, and ask them if they enjoy updating
the board. Because, IMO that is the first thing to go. I would rather spend a day on the weekend
writing a screen that produced something similar in the software (or more time). Get that killed.
Next, realize that counting the time is also a way for people to realize that they are getting
paid for their time. Even if they spend it at the water cooler, or getting a coke. So, whatever
task I am doing, if I get a coke, that time is billed to the task at hand.
Also, I have no requirement to bill 7.5hrs per day. I will be honest, on many days, I barely
get 6 billable hours in, and I am at the "office" for 8-9hrs. I give the guys who work for me a
Continuous Improvement account. They can bill up to 2hrs a day to that account. I do. Some
days I get like 3 days of work done, and others, I suffer to see 1/2 a day.
I guess the best way to look at it, is to OPTIMIZE it for you. Do as little as you can to meet
the requirement, and enjoy the work. And CERTAINLY calculate the time spent ADMINISTRATING this,
and find a way to log it.
Good Luck!
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I've worked for (and am currently working for) a company that does time logging. (To the point we are using a 3rd party app - Toggl - to track it, but there are others).
Time logging falls into a couple categories:
1) Management is worried you're not working on your job.
This indicates a problem with Management itself (and there are better tools, including ones that take a screen shot every X number of minutes). Unfortunately, not much you can do about this.
2) Management is required to track it.
Some government contracts (and others) require time tracking. It sucks. Sorry.
2) Management is tracking time for economic reasons.
Management is tracking time because they this is a capital project. Hours spent here can be written off of taxes. (So, it's required too).
Now that said, most management (except for case 1) aren't going to freak out if you make a phone call or talk to someone. The idea is to get good general hours that will withstand an auditor's scrutiny.
As for the WhiteBoard....someone has been reading about KanBan boards, and it's a pain in the neck. (You're supposed to use JIRA or a KanBan board, not both). Ask if you can (at least) use a virtual KanBan board. (JIRA might even supply something similar to a Kanban board).
Strict time logging, and you might be a crybaby...but given the Kanban board and JIRA and you might be dealing with a Situation 1 - in which case you're justified.
But ask....you might be surprised at the answer.
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Jira is pretty crap, but that board is a complete piece of s**t.
What you describe is an inditement of who-ever is in charge there. They either don't know what they're doing, or they have caved to the anal pen-pushers upstairs.
I would LOVE to be able to afford seven programmers. If I had a machine that cost around a million bucks a year to lease then I would very careful to make sure I got maximum value out of it.
What I do is assign Task tickets to my developers and let them go. Those that are time-critical I mark as such, and when I really need something quick I go tell them that.
At the end of the week my developers must "apportion" their time up among those tickets. I expect that time taking a dump, or talking crap at the water cooler, or showing the latest funny youtube to the rest of the office will be spread over those tickets.
I expect they will spend no more than a half hour a week filling in those times. Luckily for me, they spend most of the rest of the week doing what I want them to do: cutting code, fixing sh*t, or blowing smoke up the users asses.
My reasoning is: a developer, in a 40 hour week, produces x amount of output. While producing that output he also scratches his butt, and figures out ways to annoy his boss. So the cost of the output includes the cost of that stuff.
If my clients don't like that, its a free market, go deal with Sonshu's company. See how they go there.
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