Questions tagged [time-management]

Questions about time management in the context of Project Management. See also http://productivity.stackexchange.com/ for general time management questions.

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
3 votes
4 answers
156 views

Is it possible to prescribe PM time spent on key activities during a working day?

I will be transitioning from a developer role to a lead/project manager role soon, at a new job. I am not clear how Project Managers spend their day. I have asked this question to my friends and they ...
Learner_101's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
99 views

How can I find the best distribution of a set of tasks

I have a project that has many tasks, some of them needs others as requirements, others don't. All tasks have a duration that will not change. We have 5 "workers" that can work at only one task at a ...
Nicos Karalis's user avatar
7 votes
4 answers
244 views

How can I handle objections about the percent of utilization of a non-technical PM?

One of our best PMs is a non-technical PM. She used to be a BA, not a developer, and is extremely detail oriented, has excellent communications, is Scrum certified, etc. We are placing her on one of ...
Amrinder Arora's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
321 views

Ratio of learning time and working time at work in software development

In software development, technology is changing super fast. Therefore, learning new skills and testing new tools are indispensable . If the schedule is tight, developers will not have enough time to ...
Van Huy's user avatar
  • 143
0 votes
1 answer
835 views

Network Diagram Duration Problem in time management

I am practicing exam nowadays to get PMP exam using famous exam simulator but i found question i cannot determine how they draw the diagram table below : & they draw it like the following : my ...
Sherif's user avatar
  • 1
0 votes
1 answer
7k views

MS Project: Make task delays visible

I want to show the delays that are caused by moving the end of a task. Let's say I have a task that is planned like that: Task 1 - Start: 26.10.2015 End: 20.11.2015 Now the following changes occur: ...
Peter's user avatar
  • 165
0 votes
1 answer
153 views

How to communicate technical obstacles?

For my project management class we have been proposed with a case and have been asked to come up with a proposed solution. I am not quite sure how to approach this, or what the best solution might be. ...
iceren12's user avatar
5 votes
6 answers
4k views

What is the purpose of logging work on daily time sheets?

My company recently introduced time sheet logging for each individual in the development team. To be honest, it is quite time consuming. Each member needs to log what they have done each day. They ...
Erif Foorp's user avatar
19 votes
7 answers
13k views

What are developers expected to do during testing in the latter half of each Sprint?

When you are using the Scrum framework, a Sprint cycle involves development and QA. At the end of the Sprint the tasks worked upon and tested are showcased and released. Typically, for a team of 3 to ...
John's user avatar
  • 648
5 votes
6 answers
705 views

Team productivity vs team size

I am looking for information about how the team size impacts project velocity. Let's assume that I have a small project estimated at 300 hours for single worker. What impact does team size have on ...
Damian Kwaśniak's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
149 views

Automating processes within your organization?

Case: My company deals with creative tasks, which by default are difficult to automate: graphic design video editing / post-production audio composition & sound effects On the other side, for ...
Sulitzer's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
599 views

How to automatically track time spent on tasks

In my organization, we have tasks that are repeated in the same way for every project. I need to track the time the team or an individual has spent doing those tasks (i.e. the time between the moment ...
Federico's user avatar
  • 111
-2 votes
3 answers
202 views

How many minutes an employee worked? [closed]

we have observed in our company that employees are prone to take multiple breaks during a typical 8 hours working day. We wish to deploy a system which will keep a count of how many minutes an ...
Chandragupta Borkotoky's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
79 views

Vocabulary used in drawing activity diagrams

In a drawing activity diagram when it says: Activity A Follows Activity B does it mean A->B or B->A? I am confused with this lingo.
user1899082's user avatar
13 votes
3 answers
73k views

What does person-month mean in development time?

I have a question about communication channels that is talking about person-month but I don't understand what is a person-month. Does it mean this many persons? or this many months? Here is the full ...
user1899082's user avatar
0 votes
5 answers
365 views

Time taken for a project versus time objective

I've set a time objective for my project. 10 days, for example. The project took 15 days to complete. I have to report the performance regarding the time of the project, as a %. My question is: how ...
Catalin Paval's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
372 views

Is it bad, if events took much less time than Scrum Guide prescribes?

The question opposite to this and this one. Sometime Scrum events may took much less time than Scrum Guide prescribes. Is it a signal, that we did something wrong? As usual, there is my thoughts on ...
Sergey Kudryavtsev's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
3k views

What should Scrum Master do if Scrum Team hasn't reached an event goal after time-box expires?

What should the Scrum Master do if the time-box of event has already expired, but the goal not reached yet? This is the quote that made me think about this question: So what do we do when the time-...
Sergey Kudryavtsev's user avatar
3 votes
3 answers
444 views

What Scrum Master should do to prevent out of time constraints (time-boxes) of events?

Scrum has strict limitations of events in time. It is hard to stay in the events time-boxes that Scrum Guide prescribes. What Scrum Master should do to avoid situation when Scrum Team didn't reach a ...
Sergey Kudryavtsev's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
821 views

How to calculate Critical Path including Std Dev for each activity estimate?

When estimating activity durations, you get a duration plus/minus a sigma (standard deviation) for each activity. Afterwards, when you want to determine the critical path, what figure should you ...
Cristian PM's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
369 views

When do you determine whether project will use sequential phase-to-phase manner or as a overlapping phase manner for project management?

Is determining if a project is going to executed in a sequential phase-to-phase manner or as a overlapping phase (fast-tracking) manner done in Project Management plan( and/or one of it's subsidiary ...
CS Lewis's user avatar
  • 347
2 votes
4 answers
371 views

Best reply to project manager's failed humour [closed]

Whenever a manager ask us to perform a task, we often ask "when do you need this by?" Some managers try to be smart and often say: "yesterday". What would be the best comeback response?
javaPhobic's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
101 views

Is it feasible for a project manager to work reduced schedule for a a few months? [closed]

A project manager's demands can be varying and unpredictable at times. Could somebody offer feedback on how to make a reduced schedule (like 30 hours) workable and successful ?
radha's user avatar
  • 1
0 votes
1 answer
176 views

Cloud-Based Time Tracking Software [closed]

I'm looking for a cloud-based time tracking service for a 20 person company which allows employees to be logged in throughout the day and choose a work category from a drop down menu, choose the ...
Baruch's user avatar
  • 109
1 vote
3 answers
6k views

What is "Lead Time"?

I have a task within my project criteria which states: "Purchasing lead-time for the steelwork is estimated at 60-80 days". What does lead time mean? Do I have to make special considerations for this?...
user3650137's user avatar
3 votes
6 answers
7k views

How to handle a slow developer?

We have a team of 3. Developers A and B would each take about a day to do a task X. Developer C will take an entire week. What is the best way to deal with this? I don't want to fire them because it's ...
Benubird's user avatar
  • 147
14 votes
3 answers
8k views

Why management is more concerned of JIRA hours than of following Scrum values?

As in many other projects, we are also using JIRA to manage tasks and user stories, and Scrum as the Agile methodology. At the end of each day, the ScrumMaster provides the burndown chart to the PMO ...
Knowledge Craving's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
348 views

How to track and manage tooling issues?

In every complex project, we use a lot of external dependencies and tooling. Of course, they have bugs. Thanks to Github and the like, it is very easy to fork a project and track issues in libraries ...
Thomas Wickham's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
1k views

Can an inexperienced person be a project manager?

What is the value of experience in a role of a Project Manager (Technical Manager). The problems I am facing is: During assigning tasks I do not know about dependencies. I have to rely on what my ...
prem30488's user avatar
  • 145
11 votes
5 answers
2k views

How to estimate time required and deadlines for creative and problem-solving tasks?

How to quantify time requirements for tasks that are almost purely problem-solving or creative? And how to set deadlines based on those estimates? Practical scenario in my team: Steve must find a ...
user avatar
1 vote
4 answers
290 views

Should I remove distraction time from developers' capacity time while giving time estimation?

I am about to give new estimations of a project delivery time, estimating iterations etc.. Besides development, developers spend much time on distractions. By distractions I mean everything(tea, ...
saakian's user avatar
  • 702
9 votes
9 answers
44k views

How many projects can a PM manage at the same time?

We are a small team and can afford only one project manager (PM). As a result he's basically managing all of our projects. To keep the quality of our business, we would not like to overload him. ...
ben_fff76's user avatar
  • 389
2 votes
1 answer
206 views

Need appropriate software development process and paradigms for very short term project

I have to do a sort of case study in applying a software development methodology. The focus is more on the report which documents my experiences with the process. I have only 16 days left to do the ...
Bug Killer's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
1k views

Recording work experience on PMP application

can I have 0 hours recorded for some process groups in my PMP application? as I was not involved in all the process groups.
Vivian's user avatar
  • 51
1 vote
2 answers
212 views

Am I not organized, or have I put too much work on myself?

I am a member of a team of programmers. We do not have a real boss as we work as a group. Each member of a group took non-programming tasks on himself as well, which mainly means that they do testing ...
ben_fff76's user avatar
  • 389
4 votes
2 answers
1k views

For every hour cutting code, how many project hours are spent doing something else?

I work on a large line-of-business legacy application, my projects are very much NOT green field. The dev teams are small, usually 2 developers, 1 system tester, plus part-time PM and BA resources. ...
Liz Burchill's user avatar
0 votes
3 answers
218 views

What is the effective procedure or process to get the esimate of the Project Managers time on the projects ? [duplicate]

When you estimate for project management i.e PM's role time, do you take a certain % of the total estimate? Can you provide me the process or procedure used in general and how accurate it is?
Sreedhar Nadadur's user avatar
0 votes
5 answers
3k views

Improving quality and efficiency in development team

Hi I started a new web development company and have some clients. At present one of my clients regularly complains about loss of time and poor quality of the work. How can I simultaneously increase ...
Maneesh Mohanachandran's user avatar
3 votes
3 answers
10k views

Calculate start and finish dates based on remaining work in Project

I have a project plan for a project that we already started and I want the plan to reflect the schedule moving forward, say as of tomorrow. I have a handful of dependencies and resources assigned. I ...
Mark Ursino's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
11k views

Indicate max hours per day per resource in MS Project Plan

I have a project that has 4 team members in the plan: 2 developers @ 8 hours per day 2 developers @ 4 hours per day How can I configure that two of those dev can only work 4 hours per day but the ...
Mark Ursino's user avatar
15 votes
7 answers
2k views

When is time tracking too detailed?

Currently, all developers all required to "clock in" by actually clicking on a timer in our internal application. So even a discrepancy of 3 minutes from the budget needs to be accounted for. As a PM,...
TechWire's user avatar
  • 481
9 votes
3 answers
1k views

How to handle a complex project without Tech Lead or Project Manager?

I am working on a complex project in Android alone. There is no tech lead or any project manager to guide me about the project development. I have to interact with the client and do the work according ...
Naresh Sharma's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
1k views

Project, Time, and Task Management software 1 person [closed]

I have spend countless hours trying demos of the 100's of types of project and task management software out there, and none seem to fit the bill of exactly what I am looking to accomplish. I decided ...
Jason's user avatar
  • 11
4 votes
4 answers
6k views

Is there anything wrong with sending meeting minutes late?

I like my emails to be perfect, especially the minutes that summerise the meetings we have, I understand that it is obviously preferred to send it through right after the meeting, or even an hour late ...
I AM L's user avatar
  • 331
0 votes
2 answers
140 views

New Project Management Duties

From being a Tester to a Developer then to a service support engineer, I am now responsible for program coordination and resource management (Yes it is a big shift), along with some Project management ...
I AM L's user avatar
  • 331
0 votes
1 answer
341 views

I am having difficulties in managing tasks that shows up in a random fashion

I am managing 4 projects, and every time I check email, I do see lots of tasks. Once I complete all these tasks, and feel it is done, again I see suddenly something else coming up. Please suggest ...
Siva's user avatar
  • 415
16 votes
4 answers
29k views

What is the typical ratio of PM/EM hours to "work" hours in a project?

What is the rule-of-thumb ratio of Project Manager/Engagement Manager time to overall project time (e.g. man-hours for work products) in a project? I'm especially interested in an answer within the ...
warren's user avatar
  • 942
3 votes
1 answer
137 views

How should support be provided for existing software?

In our organization, sales people and administrators ask developers for support whenever they experience a problem. How should support time be structured/provided for existing software without ...
user1450877's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
358 views

Have I become paranoid about project & time management?

How do you manage your projects (and your personal life) ? I tend to become psychotic because nothing seems to work. To specify the requirements & information better (as a developer's way of ...
Radolino's user avatar
  • 275
35 votes
15 answers
14k views

Is imposing "impossible deadlines" a Management Technique?

I am a developer aiming to become a manager. I want to know if the following is a valid management technique (within reasonable parameters, to be determined), I want to know how to deal with it and to ...
user1220's user avatar
  • 453