Time tracking is a popular method for understanding how employees are spending their time and ensuring they don’t waste valuable work hours. But what is its role in project management? Do project managers benefit from a time tracking software?
Time tracking in project management is a reliable way of ensuring employee productivity and efficiency to generate high-quality work. For project managers, employee time tracking is crucial to make strategic decisions for accomplishing the designated milestones on time.
Let’s look at how time tracking plays a critical role in effective project management:
Better time management
A time tracking software lets you keep track of hours by being utilized by an employee with the help of automated timesheets. This helps you understand how much time a certain task is taking, which allows you to better manage time and schedule upcoming work more efficiently.
It also allows you to assess individual employee performance so you can allot resources accordingly within the project. When you compare how much time two different employees take to accomplish the same task, it helps you determine which of the two is more competent for a certain set of tasks. This time tracking data, alongside evaluations and feedback, can be useful to have when conducting an employee performance management review allowing you to track and guide performance all year.
Meet project deadlines
Time tracking helps you assess how much time it will take to reach a certain project milestone. With the level of accuracy provided by a time tracking software, you can understand the overall progress of the project at any given point.
Knowing any loopholes and shortcomings in the process allows you to make amends to bring the project back on track. This assures you meet project deadlines and there is a better chance of meeting all the project goals.
Accurate estimates
Project management relies heavily on estimates that are to be provided to the client. Even a small mistake can magnify your project costs and derail your entire budget. Keeping track of time being spent by team members on a certain project gives you an accurate number of billable hours.
You can also refer to previous timesheets to verify how much time a similar task took in the past which can help you provide estimates that are backed by evidence. This improves your project estimation significantly and you can bill clients accurately.
Effective organization
A project manager is responsible for scheduling work as per priority of tasks. This becomes easier when you can see how your team is spending their time. Keeping track of time allows you to focus on the most urgent tasks and allocate work to ensure timely completion.
Project management goes haywire when managers don’t know when a certain part of the project was started and how soon an employee can finish it. Time tracking ensures you never have to worry about time getting wasted within a project.
Higher productivity
A project requires a high level of planning and organization to ensure the successful completion and delivery to the client. This is impossible if the employees are not working to the best of their abilities or often getting stuck while trying to resolve an issue. With time tracking in place, such situations get highlighted.
Tracking employee work hours pushes them to be more accountable and helps them to stay more focused. Since their time is being monitored, they are bound to stay more alert which highly increases their productivity levels.
Conclusion
As a project manager, you obviously know that unintentional wasting of time leads to projects getting derailed which makes a company lose its hard-earned reputation. A time tracker free software allows you to avoid this situation and ensures you accurately estimate project completion timelines. With the automated timesheets from past projects, you can schedule tasks more efficiently and accomplish project goals on time.