Time Tracking on Solo Projects

[Peter Bell]

Hello All,

Just been thinking about estimating, time tracking, project management
and the like on solo projects. I find for my needs that I need a
little more granularity that just story cards and projects as I jump
between too many different projects in a week and need to track
profitability on all of them to decide what kind of work to push and
what kind of projects to drop.

Here are some initial thoughts:
http://www.pbell.com/index.cfm/2009/4/20/Tracking-your-time-on-Solo-Projects

I'll report back at the end of the week. What do the rest of you do to
track time/effort across lots of small projects in a lightweight, low
ceremony way?

Comments here or on the posting appreciated!

Best Wishes.
Peter

[Bob Silverberg]

Interesting post, Peter.  I have responded via a comment on your blog.

--
Bob Silverberg
www.silverwareconsulting.com

[Sean Corfield]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 11:55 AM, Peter Bell <pe...@pbell.com> wrote:
> Just been thinking about estimating, time tracking, project management
> and the like on solo projects. I find for my needs that I need a
> little more granularity that just story cards and projects as I jump
> between too many different projects in a week and need to track
> profitability on all of them to decide what kind of work to push and
> what kind of projects to drop.

Interestingly, the Pomodoro Technique helps here because you mostly
spend 25 minutes at a time on issues and therefore at the end of each
segment you can simply add 25 minutes to the appropriate project task.
At worst you have to allocate the 25 minutes across a handful of
tasks.

It doesn't help project estimation but it's great for time tracking :)
--
Sean A Corfield -- (904) 302-SEAN
CTO, Railo US -- http://getrailo.com/
An Architect's View -- http://corfield.org/

"If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive."
-- Margaret Atwood

[Peter Bell]

Hi Andrew,

I appreciate your passion for Agile, but I don't think going onto a group you've not been involved with and then immediately suggesting with no context that people go buy your book is a great way of introducing yourself to people. And given that you're talking about estimating "across the enterprise" I've got to wonder whether you even noticed the title of the group - SOLO scrum.

I'm also interested to see how your conversations with Ron will turn out on the scrumdevelopment list, but I've got to say that while I often use apps for managing burndown data with distributed teams, pretty much *all* the agile coaches I know would support Ron in saying that both distributed teams and using software for velocity tracking are less effective than a co-located team and hand drawn burn down charts (but let's keep any discussion on that off this list as I don't think it relates to its mission).

That said, good luck with your book and if you have anything useful to contribute to the topics of SOLO scrum, I look forward to receiving those contributions on this list.

Best Wishes,

Peter

On Apr 3, 2011, at 3:42 PM, Andrew Pham wrote:

Oops, forgot to include the team...
Andrew
Agile and Lean Coach, Author of Scrum in Action
http://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Action-Andrew-Pham/dp/143545913X/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1

On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Andrew <andrew...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Peter,
My book contains some info that could be useful to you, especially to
know how to identify user stories and estimate them across the
enterprise using a compatible story point...
Regards,
Andrew
http://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Action-Andrew-Pham/dp/143545913X/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1

On Apr 20 2009, 1:55 pm, Peter Bell <pe...@pbell.com> wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> Just been thinking about estimating, time tracking, project management  
> and the like on solo projects. I find for my needs that I need a  
> little more granularity that just story cards and projects as I jump  
> between too many different projects in a week and need to track  
> profitability on all of them to decide what kind of work to push and  
> what kind of projects to drop.
>

> Here are some initial thoughts:http://www.pbell.com/index.cfm/2009/4/20/Tracking-your-time-on-Solo-P...

[Peter Bell]

Hi Andrew,

At best I'd call that a highly selective reading of their responses. The consensus was clearly that it's not as good as hand drawing the charts and that co-location is an important component of success. Even those who work with distributed teams seemed on balance to favor hand drawing in each location and/or using a video camera or photograph of the hand drawn charts to communicate information between the locations.

However, again, this is O/T for SOLO scrum. If you want to drop me a line directly, feel free. Let's not spam this list with more O/T communications.

Best Wishes,

Peter

On Apr 4, 2011, at 2:41 PM, Andrew Pham wrote:

Hi Peter,

I hope you have seen by now how many people from the scrumdevelopment discussion group are supporting my position in saying that they know of many successful teams that use software to automatically create/update their burndown chart (rather than drawing it by hand)...

Regards,

Andrew Pham

Agile and Lean Coach, Author of Scrum in Action
http://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Action-Andrew-Pham/dp/143545913X/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1