[thelist] Filling up timesheets - good or bad?

[martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com]

Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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Subject:  Re: [thelist] Filling up timesheets - good or bad?




> > or it cuts into your other 8 hours, then enter it... bosses will see
> > that you are either stressed or grumpy...
>
> enter it as what?

>well, we have a task here called 'Time not Worked'... people
>usually enter details like, playing unreal, trying to clean the mouse,
>finding my color wheel, throwing slinkies at steve, etc...

You also need codes for a range of staff management functions -
holidays, personnel meetings etc etc

>i've been inside 1,500 person companies and 5 person
>companies... i had 4 bosses at one point, and those days were
>horrible... but using a good project manager and time tracking tool
>alleviated a lot of crap, no matter the size of the company... after
>all, we're talking individual projects, not the entire company (which
>is hard to grasp for some boss-men)...

A good system depersonalises issues - it should move the emphasis
from blame to getting things fixed. ISO9000 should also do the same.

>> You're lucky. This never happens to me. I try to work on one thing at a time,
>> but shit seems to revolve around the bossmen/bosswomen/bosspeople's
schedules.
>> I'm working on Project A and they schedule a meeting for project B, stop me
to
>> talk about Project C, ask a question about Project D that was finished last
>> week, etc., etc., etc.

>it's not as hard as it seems... you ever tried refusing a meeting
>appointment?  it's fun when all 4 of your bosses wonder why, and
>your reason is that you have real work to do...

So you present *them* with the choice - if they would rather project A was
late than miss you out of a meeting on project B, then it's their management
decision.

Of course, you'd present them with a suggested option.

Good managers respect this stuff.

Cheers
Martin


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