A colleague desperately wanted me to write about time-sheets. Disclaimer: This is pure fiction (and so is the stuff put in a time-sheet)
Groan! Oh No! WTF, sucks man, crap, this is seriously crap, abey kya hein. These are some of the expressions by Indian software guys, when they must fill in a Time-sheet.
What is a time-sheet?
When management is confused about your work/tasks, you are asked to fill a simple spreadsheet, with your daily tasks and the time spent on them. That in itself is not bad, but then the 8 hour rule kicks in.
For example:-
– Analyzed problem.
– Brainstormed with so-so engineer.
– Explored different methodologies.
– 1 hour Knowledge transfer session
– Meeting, Meeting, Meeting
– Watched results!!?
These adjectives (!?) are picked from the vast databases of S/W resumes.
Sample Time-sheet
Date |
Time Spent |
Task |
Feb 1 |
3 |
Analyzed 3 issues |
|
1 |
Interacted with other engineers about complications |
|
2 |
1 hour knowledge Transfer session |
|
1 |
3 Meeting s |
|
1 |
Brainstormed for ideas |
In reality the above looks like…
Date |
Time Spent |
Task |
Feb 1 |
3 |
No analysis required, I already know these are 3 issues. |
|
1 |
Chatted up with colleagues over coffee |
|
2 |
10 minute overview of module; 50 minute knowledge gossip |
|
1 |
2 meetings and 1 cancelled |
|
1 |
Came up with creative & useful looking tasks for time-sheet |
The top 5 favorite 1 liners engineers love to use in their time-sheet
1) Meeting or better, company wide meeting
2) Knowledge Transfer session. The more people involved here, the more genuine it looks.
3) Setting up environment.
4) Responded to customer queries (aha the ideal employee, who is brilliant enough to help customers directly)
5) <I could think of only 4>
Buzz words
Analyzed, explored, optimized, re-factored, shared, tested
Saying all this, I know for a fact that engineers love time-sheets when they worked hard & long on a particular work day. Time-sheet is an excellent medium to officially brag about your value-added-services to the team. On such a day the engineer will gleefully enter all the tasks, the number of issues solved, and more. He would proactively inquire with his lead if he did receive the time-sheet. If the lead did read, appreciation is expected.
Engineers love to hear “Hey. Good Job! That was hard work”
So that they can say “No Problem. It’s not a big deal” (Oh it is big, it is the biggest deal of this unproductive week)
and then other engineers think “Oho Good Job..eh? Wait till my edited time-sheet becomes public”
and yet others can’t decide if they are happy that more work wasn’t given or envious that they can’t decorate their time-sheets in a similar fashion (as seen above)
If engineers dislike filling time-sheets, then they absolutely hate not filling them up when working on a weekend. Unfortunately time-sheets have a design flaw, they are built for 5-Day work week.
Pros
– bring transparency
– improve productivity
– improve creative writing
Cons
– they SUCK!
People once said – The world is flat.
Now they say – The world is transparent. (because of time-sheets)
Coming Soon
Me, Myself and my timesheet by Abhishek Garewal
“Hey. Good Job! That was hard work“ 😉
LoL
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presentation matters!!! enter the management arena via timesheets!!!!!!!!!!
wondrous!!!!!!!
Doing more for less does not necessarily mean having great technology. More depends on managing time effectively so that not only productivity goes up bu…
Very nice one buddy, surely you can enter 8 hours of timesheet for this wonderfull work LOL
I also write on software life : please visit http://mysoftwareworld.wordpress.com/
Great Blog man. Keep up the writing.
Reading this was fun. You write TRUTH… hann…
Very true… even i tried to be innovative today when filling my time sheet [:P]
Maybe we should write doc for sample things to fill in timesheet
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