Written by Ola Rybacka
A lot of people are adverse to the idea of time tracking. For them, it is a tedious process that takes a lot of time getting used to. However, time management is a skill that you should possess if you are a project manager. Learning how to do it effectively can greatly affect you and your team.
Here are 5 simple ways that time tracking makes you a project management rock star:
1. Understand how long tasks really take to complete and plan accordingly.
Your colleagues will no longer complain about not having enough time to complete the tasks assigned to them. And cliché as it might sound, time is like gold. If you waste time, you will be wasting a precious resource.
It is important to account for the hours spent on a project, especially if you are going to be audited by higher management.
2. Keep your teams on track and focused.
There are lots of distractions in the modern workplace. It is important for project managers to be able to keep teams on track. Effective time management can improve the productivity of your time.
It is also important to consider all the factors that can make your team miss a project deadline. You should set a clear end goal, and identify the problems that you might face along the way. Not only that, but you should also define specific metrics that will allow you to measure the progress of the project.
3. Estimate how long tasks take for each team member.
This can be done by looking at how long it took team members to complete past projects. Then you use that data to determine the average speed of each team member for particular tasks. This is vital when you are making decisions on how much time to allocate for individual team members in the future.
4. Be strict when you need to be.
There might be some team members who think they can multitask to be more productive. But in reality, this practice can reduce one’s productivity. By working on several tasks at a time, certain team members may find themselves overwhelmed with data and information.
As a project manager, it is important that you create a schedule where your colleagues focus on a single task at a time.
5. Choose a helpful time tracker app.
Your app of choice should be packed with lots of useful features. Which doesn’t mean just time tracking—computer usage and productivity tracking can also be extremely useful for project managers.
For those people who are billing their customers on an hourly rate, budgeting and billable hours also go hand-in-hand with a time tracking solution. Detailed reports should also be part of your time tracking app, to track your team’s productivity.
As you can see, time tracking is an important activity if you want to be a better project manager. Time is an important asset, and it is only through proper time tracking that you can use it wisely.
Axosoft integrates with time tracking solutions like TimeCamp, to help make you a rockstar project manager!