Time Recording

Time tracking is the act of recording the time spent performing work. The objective is to ensure that it is possible to understand the amount of time that has been spent delivering an item of any level within the workflow hierarchy.

Why it matters:

There a several reasons why it is important to record the time spent by teams performing work:

Financial Regulatory Needs, and Understanding and Amortising Costs

In order to determine investment in technology, knowing how much time has been spent delivering it is necessary. The purpose of this is broad and varied, as an example it is vital when advocating for further investment, or while evaluating accuracy of certain hypotheses (e.g. the analytics project’s time savings gained by the Engagement team).

Additionally, certain pieces of work can be capitalised and need to be amortised by the business. (Some investments are deemed to have added new value to the business, and under financial regulatory rules we can spread the cost of that investment over a number of years.) This can only be done where the time spent has been accurately recorded.

There may well be opportunities in the future to apply for tax benefits related to our R&D investment. Again, this can only be done where the time spent has been accurately recorded.

Finally, we need to evaluate the maintenance costs of our platform. (Platform maintenance covers all investment that isn’t specifically new development that can be capitalised.) Maintenance takes a number of forms, and grows over time. Accurately understanding maintenance expenditure is at least helpful, and possibly a requirement for financial auditing.

Improving Planning and Estimation

We can use hours spent to create a fuller picture of what abstract (e.g. ROM or point based) estimates mean. E.g. x points on average required y hours of effort.

We can then understand how we are tracking against our estimates, allowing us to understand if the estimates are accurate, and if our plans are on track. This more likely applies at the sprint and runway planning layers, although will also bubble up into delivery planning.

This can help us improve our estimation practices, by performing analysis of inaccuracies.

While there are a number of ways to achieve or at least work towards the above without time tracking (for example by looking at the aggregated output of sprints), this level of data can enable greater insights.

Approaches

By the end of each sprint, all tasks marked as done must have the time spent recorded against them.

The team can chose how they wish to record hours. For example:

• Time spent can be recorded daily: at the end of each day all tasks are updated with the time spent so far
• Upon completion of each task
• At the end of the sprint as a group: the team run through all backlog items and their tasks and record the hours spent.
• When a backlog item is completed.

While hours recorded will need to be fairly accurate, it will be impossible to be perfectly accurate, and this is not the goal. Using common sense to balance the time spent against the value gained is needed.

Using the Data

Time spent data will be used by the business to determine investment in products, for both financial reporting and business planning.

Time spent data may be used by teams to evaluate estimation and planning accuracy and make improvements.

Time spent data must never be used as tool for criticism or to apply pressure or blame. This will result in net-negative outcomes. When evaluating accuracy of past estimates, it should be done so with both context (there are reasons why it took longer, these reasons should be considered for future estimates), and where appropriate.

Teams should seek support in evaluating time spent hours if they are concerned about gaining value from this information.