[thelist] Filling up timesheets - good or bad?

martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com
Fri Jan 12 04:32:33 CST 2001


Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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



>> > From: "Warden, Matt" <mwarden at odyssey-design.com>
>> >
>> > My employer used to require this. It's not a good idea, IMO. Or, maybe
just
>> > they way they wanted every second to be accounted for. Unfortunately:
> >
>> > 1. Co-workers ask for help
>>
>>then you log that time... it's important for managers to know who is
>> doing informal training, about what topics, and for how long... that
>> way they can institute proper training, or allocate more time for you
>> to train people, or whatever...

>Maybe it was just a problem with the time-tracking application we had, but you
>couldn't do this, and they refused to create a "project" called "Helping
>Coworkers" or whatever.

You log the time to whatever they're working on. If there's a comments field,
then you note that you're helping them out.

>You could only log hours to projects you were assigned to.
>I'm beginning to think that it isn't the fault of timesheets themselves, but
>just the way they were implimented.

You're right. If I help you on your project, the client in question should get
billed for my time. Otherwise, the firm doesn't see anything different from
me sitting around, doing nothing.


>> > 3. You take breaks every so often to keep yourself from going nuts
>
>> yeah?  so what?  if you're taking more than the hour you're allowed,

>for lunch? i'm not talking about lunch.

Normal things which you would do anyway (toilet stops, coffee etc)
class as part of your working time - they're stuff you need to do to get
the work done. And hey, it's thinking time too, yeah?

Likewise travel to client site.

> let the reports do that for you... don't have
> a project meeting until the boss-man has read the reports...

>Ummmm... what? Maybe you're used to small companies, but I had at least three
>or four "bosses"... and a few others who like to act like they were my boss.
>Only one of them was concerned with time. The others were concerned with the
>projects themselves and how we were going to do things.

Don't blame sensible systems for the damage which idiot bosses do. This PHB
would mess up *any* system designed to support projects.

>Yes. The bossman was notified... quite a number of times. He called her
>"green" and said she just needed to "get acclimated with the environment".
>Since there was no where to log this time, that bossman just told me to forget
>about it... and that was the beginning of the crumbling of that hours system.

That's what training codes are all about.

Cheers
Martin

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