Time Management Secrets & Red Flags for Productivity and Avoid Procrastination

1. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 1

2. |Contents| Chapter 1: 5 Red Flags Your Time Tracking Costs Productivity…………….............. 3 - 9 Chapter 2: 5 Noteworthy Time Management Secrets for Entrepreneurs………….10 - 15 Chapter 3: How to Enable Transparent Time Tracking for your Employees……16 - 20 Chapter 4: Time Management Tips for Product Managers……………………………..21- 25 Chapter 5: The secret to Time Management & Productivity……………………………26 - 32 |Conclusion| © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 2

3. Are you under the notion of being a workaholic since the lack of time takes a toll on your work? With changing dynamics in the digital age, time tracking has served to be an advantageous affair to both, employers and employees. What boosts your productivity depends on the set of priorities. Not only this but also the right time tracking software must suit your company’s requirements and goals. Why is Time tracking important in Organizations? Given that Project Management is a heavy responsibility, the benefits you gain from time tracking with project management tools have a greater edge. That said, defining the deadlines, delegating tasks, and analyzing the results are three main cornerstones that make Project Management a prime weapon to achieve a higher ROI. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 3

4. Micro-management is a term that’s long forgotten because it’s nearly impossible to keep a tab on every task assigned without a tool. What made Time Tracking a success for the last few years are Billable vs. non-billable hours Identifying resource availability Total project hours vs. spent hours Resource Utilization Planned vs. actual hours All in all, the absence of resourceful Time Tracking software can turn your dream project into a nightmare. Are you already using a Time Tracking Tool? Are you sure you’re tracking time properly? Oftentimes, it’s the employees’ approach towards time tracking and not just the organization’s software that’s responsible. In other words, you can’t manage your time if you don’t know how to do it. If you’re currently using a time tracking tool that hasn’t reaped you the desired fruits as yet, it’s time to watch out for some Red Flags on Time Tracking practices that could be crushing your productivity. With the relevant fixes, you’ll get a clear picture of how effectively this information can transform your long working hours into productive hours. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 4

5. 1.Randomly Filling Timesheets “Guesswork” takes the centre stage as a time tracking challenge and a red flag. Most of the employees use guesswork while filling the timesheet when they forget to mark the time after task completion. It’s a natural practice to enter estimates and not the exact hours spent at work or on each task. “Break free from “Guesstimates” as they act as senseless logging of time hours.” Why is it important to log timesheets efficiently? The major problem with filling timesheets is people thinking about how long they have been working and accordingly, segregating time into equal work hours for each task. This causes confusion to allocate future tasks for different projects to hit timely project delivery. This usually happens when most of the tools available don’t allow users to focus on their work. It gets burdensome for employees to fill in when and how they worked. For example, Orangescrum automatically tracks time on individual tasks for a week and then analyses a variation in similar task types, if any. Not only this, but it also tracks resource availability with time duration for all activities your team has worked on. 2.No Real-time tracking / Multitasking Firstly, having multiple projects on hand makes an employees’ life tedious. With this in mind, it’s crucial to educate employees on the priority workflows of each project. Focusing on a single project or task at a time has done more good than lurking over multiple tasks, resulting in zero productivity. According to Tempo’s 2019 report, “Multi-tasking without time-tracking decreases productivity to 45%”. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 5

6. A lot of employees are unaware of the fact that the websites and apps they visit need to be recorded. While switching between apps, using a gamut of tools and several websites, it becomes a business mandate to record such visits in timesheets and reports. The only way to make data that reliable is some genuine time tracking software. This also means, making it easier to maintain a particular project team time tracking. 3. Misleading Time tracking reports A 2013 survey conducted by Replicon showed that “96% reported that their employees make mistakes when reporting their working time”. This survey was conducted on 432 professionals and must have some hard truth to it. It’s wise for Managers to check how their employees spent their working hours (Time tracking shouldn’t be confused with ‘spying’). Most of the employees do not understand the impact of the misleading time reports created by them. Failing to create accurate reports for hours spent in given activities could lead to failure in allocating resources and assignments. Inaccurate data in timesheets mean wrong decisions for the management. This can reflect badly on the brand itself. It could also lead to huge budget losses for the organization. The main reason is that employees consider time tracking as a time-wasting admin task. After all, not every tool would offer the feature of detailed reports. It’s essential for organizations to use the software which enables generating accurate and detailed reports. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 6

7. 3.Ad-hoc Requests that affect Time Tracking With projects running at maximum capacity, a mid-project could pop up and disrupt the steady workflow of an employee’s schedule. Firstly, let’s understand why leaving Ad-hoc projects untracked is a big deal— Aids in eliminating the root cause of a particular challenge Helps in justifying current headcount and lobbying for additional resources Addressing urgencies that could profit business and employees alike Saying “no” to lesser important tasks and rescheduling is better than keeping the task hanging So, what’s the best way to track ad-hoc projects? Creating a centralized request hub Segregation of request types Record the number of requestors and their priorities Timing of the requests Time spent by you on such requests per day/week/month Defining project requirements and clarifying expectations This also rings a bell about the famous Pomodoro technique that reflects on the importance of taking shorter breaks during regular intervals. This in turn stimulates the brain to enhance productivity. This is a famous ‘time blocking’ method that can work well with time tracking. The idea is to strike a balance between Time Tracking and ‘Time Blocking’ that can be utilized in such scenarios. When the focus is on quantity, productivity becomes the need of the hour! The Managers who used Orangescrum could utilize time blocking with time tracking, thanks to its project management tool. This had a greater impact during the onset of Covid -19 crises when remote team time tracking was © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 7

8. the only way to ease ad-hoc requests. With a lot of tasks on hand, many of Orangescrum’s users could gather ad-hoc requests to plan them into a combined task. 4.Procrastination Procrastination is a devil that leaves you with heaps of workload. Make sure you get rid of pending tasks asap for saving yourself the horror of workload management. A procrastinating mind never takes tasks on hand until the deadline date commences. Managers need to pay attention to reasons that may have caused the procrastination: Low motivation Lack of Training Faulty assumptions Poor Time Management Lack of interest in the subject Lack of goals © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 8

9. This lists a blend of skill and will issues. However, if it’s a skill issue, you need to follow a strategic approach. The solution to this? Time Management is the ultimate solution to Procrastination. Avoid taking on heavy tasks at hand and slot some of them with easier tasks. Managing your time with a personal sub-task reminder can get you on your toes. Set a target for each little task (Create a checklist). Slotting your tasks into smaller tasks can bring more clarity to your goals and align with that of the management. Parting words Time tracking is more than just numbers! Working solo or with a team will definitely demand your efforts in tracking time. What’s more important is how strategically you use the software that allows you the comfort and ease of delivering projects on or before time. An all-in-one time tracking system for delivering complex projects is what organizations need today. Make Orangescrum a part of your Project Management journey and join our family of happy customers! Let our Project Time Tracking tool decide for you! © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 9

10. Time Management has earned an underrated title over time. It’s a term that people use but seldom implement in their lives. A recent study revealed that most people are productive only for 3 hours or less in an 8-hour workday. Where do the rest of the 5 hours vanish? Is it “Burnout”? An entrepreneur’s life revolves around managing an unlimited list of tasks along with preventing burnouts. They don’t enjoy the luxury of sharing the tough tasks with the whole team. That’s exactly when they function as a ‘One-man’ army. As a result, this takes a toll on juggling between personal and professional lives, resulting in burnout. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 10

11. • “The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.” As the American Educator and businessman Stephen R. Covey rightly said Ever wondered how Time Management has played a crucial role in an Entrepreneurs life? Statistics on Time Management utilities by Entrepreneurs— According to new research from The Alternative Board, the average entrepreneur works only 31.9% of the time working on their business such as strategic planning, long-term goals, etc. Another latest report by Business Pulse Survey cites nearly 63% of business owners exceed hours of working a week whereas the average entrepreneur works close to hours! 40% of business owners admit to not maintaining an ineffective annual operating plan/budget. When it comes to web browsing and researching, 32% of their time is spent on email/web browsing. A change of mindset works to your advantage— “Treating Time Management as Money Management resolves half the burden” But what about the rest half? © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 11

12. “Repurposing” the dead zones of your time management can work wonders. How can a busy entrepreneur utilize Time Management effectively? 1.Batch Smaller Tasks Breaking down projects and completing tasks is the key motive of batching. Breaking down larger projects and tasks into smaller ones can provide the required clarity for gauging the tasks that need attention. Set priorities: After breaking down each task, set priorities for meeting deadlines. Label each task by function: Keeping your focus on similar tasks can help you stay on track and save time. For example, emailing numerous people like stakeholders, investors, bankers, etc. can be batched into one category. Setting your priorities per these batches keeps your credibility intact. 2.Time Tracking Have you analyzed the major time wasters? It’s time to focus on where you spend your time and the duration spent on it. Documenting and noting down can provide self clarification. Need something that automates your time keep you on track with your milestones? Investing in Time Tracking software will only do better than any harm. A remarkable time tracking tool offers a better project estimation. Seamless and accurate estimation leads to effective management of pipeline plus project revenue. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 12

13. Orangescrum’s time tracking software has helped numerous entrepreneurs with achieving goals. An entrepreneur has to track major chunks of work just like a project Manager For example, a self-paced starter, Narshion N. found Orangescrum easy to use with advanced functionalities to save and track time. Orangescrum addresses critical time tracking challenges and offers a software suite for our agile teams and a task-oriented management approach. Having said this, intelligent Time Tracking with a Project Management tool is sure to skyrocket your productivity! 3.The 80/20 Rule The 80-20 rule simply translates to 20 percent of customers equal 80 percent of sales. Efficiently utilizing the best assets to create maximum value out is the principle of the 80-20 rule. Entrepreneurs need to understand that getting busy isn’t going to make you rich. Managing yourself as an Entrepreneur makes you one of a kind. The objective of “Time management” is productivity and achieving more with limited assets is the easiest way to succeed and saving time on the personal front. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 13

14. 4.Invest In Productivity Tools Did you know that entrepreneurs spend nearly 77% of their time completing truly urgent tasks? A cluttered workflow can have unpleasant impacts on productivity leading to stress and delays. Investing in business productivity tools like Project Management software or cloud-based time tracking software can result in 5X your productivity levels. An all-in-one project team time tracking tool can get your projects and tasks in order, plus, provide insights on tasks completed. As productivity is the crux of managing tasks, Time Blocking plays a major role in getting more work done with little. Time blocking is especially beneficial for entrepreneurs as it has a lot to do with quantity. It focuses on discipline, planning, and objectivity. What more would an entrepreneur demand if quantitative goals get fulfilled without compromising on quality? Steps for Time Blocking— Slot your priority tasks into a calendar. Depute dates and specific hours with deadlines. Sticking to the tasks that need attention relieves half the workload. Result? Complete tasks earlier than you expected. So now you know how to plan your work ahead of time and track your progress. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 14

15. 5.Avoid Multitasking Working on multiple tasks puts your time and energy at stake. What you achieve in the end is nothing. Multitasking serves to be a major wasted time. Focusing on one thing at a time goes a long way in the process of hitting productivity goals. Multitasking calls for the urgency and need for delegation. To maximize its effect, Resource allocation plays a great role. Entrepreneurs can have a system of tracking resource availability through various tools. Remote Time Tracking: Multitasking woes are especially applicable amid the Covid-19 crisis when companies began operating remotely. Entrepreneurs and Project Managers have resorted to remote team time tracking tools that increased more productivity than ever. Time has changed and dependency on these tools has proven to reduce the hassles of collaboration. Time Management is a long term Investment If you’re a person who is limited to the practice of filling up time-sheets, you already know the next dig. If you aren’t, the best way to manage your time is to invest it in the right places with those who can ease your efforts. Time is a precious investment for the long term and it also equals money. The more time you spend on productive tools and practices, the better outcome you’re bound to achieve. Orangescrum, an apt Time Management Software If time tracking and better work-life balance have become the need of the hour, Orangescrum is your go-to time manager. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 15

16. It also offers capabilities of task management to take control of tasks across growing teams. Get your managers to work productively with 3X results with single software. As a project manager, are you still chasing your team for project time tracking? Every employer knows that time tracking is very important for productivity. But it always depends on the employees to make it transparent. What isn’t tracked can’t be measured or improved! As per the report of statistica, an untracked working environment could cost $7 million in a day in the USA. And why do they not want to time-track? They say.. it will be time-consuming © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 16

17. gathered information are not useful they think management is spying their poor performance will be highlighted their work cannot be sufficiently measured and many more excuses Painful isn’t it? Still, we can motivate the employees to track time and can enable its benefits for personal and professional growth. Let’s start with; What is time tracking? Simply put, time tracking is a mechanism that project managers and employers use to track the work of their team members for multiple purposes. Like billing, payroll, operations, etc. Organizations deploy time management software to simplify the overall process. These software help employees to be more organized and efficient and increase overall productivity. Time tracking software have proven to help save both time and money How to plug these tools into your working culture? Clarify the benefits: Speak to your team and let them know why they need it. Here you as a project manager or employer need to be with your team to specify your purpose and benefits behind time tracking © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 17

18. Explain time tracking is for their best interest, like; ensures work is allocated equally protects against work burnout helps to track overtime also explains the extra work capacity helps to identify the inefficient workflow and bottlenecks highlights the work distractions helps identify tasks that consume more time transparency over project progress helps for effective task scheduling Integrate with each workflow: By integrating time tracking within your project workflow will prevent manual error prone reporting and efforts. Additionally, incorporating time tracking into team workflows makes task management more visible. Still, you have to make it easier to do by integrating the right tool. The time tracking module may not provide the expected result until both employees and the employers do not ensure their mutual respect. Sometimes the team members feel that the time tracking is hurting their privacy. But this is not the real fact. Employees should feel comfortable offering to track their time so the project manager can cultivate an open and hassle-free working culture. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 18

19. Be Open and Transparent with your Employees When the time tracking is processed, there will be a learning curve. So the organizations must ensure proper training to get people involved in it and increase adoption. Once a time tracking culture is established, the business gets precious data that they can use to improve business processes and workflows. Then encourage team members to share feedback about time tracking. ask about how value- based pricing is better than hourly billing talk about how to optimize workflows What can make it better don’t forget to time track per task It is important to witness the benefits of the time tracking culture by your employees. Once they start seeing a rise in their efficiency, they will act accordingly. Showing you think about their comfort and wellbeing means they will adopt time tracking in no time at all. Why time tracking matters Honestly, motivating the employees is a tough job. But giving them a thorough idea of how they and the organization can benefit will do a world of good. Building trust and gaining confidence in the initiative is crucial. This way, each team member will look forward to maintaining it, instead of considering it as a compulsory evil. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 19

20. By using the right tool, companies can correlate valuable data, competence, and employee output to optimize their operations and refine their vision consistently. For straightforward time tracking, Orangescrum allows companies and workers to be fruitful at exceptional levels. Orangescrum Time tracking Orangescrum is a popular & easy to use time tracking software. It has many useful features such as agile project management, task management, resource management, time tracking, and comprehensive collaboration. Customers have maintained that they have seen at least 30% productivity rise with Orangescrum. Conclusion It’s never too late to make the right decision. It’s time to improve your employees’ productivity. Integrate Orangescrum in your work process and set a culture in place right away to assist employees to yield better results. With the use of time management software, project teams are able to: See where their teams spend the most of their time Identify non value add tasks Increase billable hours Complete projects on time Invoice accurately © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 20

21. Time Management is a must have life skill for all professionals and is all the more crucial for Product Managers. They are superlative breed of sorts as they are different things to different people in the organization. Customer Success Manager, Product Sales Manager, Product Marketing Manager, Project Manager, People Manager and what not. Imagine what their work week would look like. Where do you think they should be spending the most of their time? Can you pick one easily? Effective product managers need to primarily focus on the customer feedback, product roadmap and development. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 21

22. And to do it successfully, they need to spend considerable amount of their time on Product backlog grooming Customer feedback calls Support team meetings Development teams So how can product managers do effective time management to ensure they meet the product vision, deliver what the customers need and drive revenue realization for their business? Conduct Short Meetings Product Manager is also the product marketer both internal and external. He/she is responsible for getting the product out to the customer, socializing the product vision, validating the product roadmap, making sales & marketing team aware of the upcoming releases and working constantly with the dev team to release a workable increment that their customers would love. Now, if he spends all his time in meetings he will be lost. Hence, setting up the right meeting cadence with all the stakeholders respectively is the first step towards optimum time management. Daily stand-up with the development team on the day’s activities and status at the beginning of the day helps set the goals to be met daily. Reviewing all feedback received from the existing customers by the support, ensuring the support team understands the product well and is capable of © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 22

23. responding with meaningful answers is also a key weekly activity for the product manager. Set that one meeting and get done with it. Do not entertain ad hoc meeting requests. Same applies for any meetings on product overviews with the sales and marketing teams. Stop being the bottleneck Product Managers love being the go-to person for any and everything regarding the product. In the short run it feels good and very soon they get strangled due to this responsibility. You are a product manager, not a live chat agent! Organize all shareable info in a manner that allows all the stakeholders to self-serve. People can always reach out for any classified or crucial information w.r.t the product’s vision or roadmap. Make a thorough content plan for every upcoming release. E.g. Feature overview content Benefits How to content In addition nip the excess anxiety in the bud by sharing the feature release plan with the key stakeholders, so they know what they will get and when. This will prevent unwanted shoulder taps, emails or review meetings. At the same time, provide the stakeholders a platform to send in their feedback as well as feature requests instead of reaching out to you directly. This will free up a lot of your time spent on meetings with zero to negligible outcomes. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 23

24. Empower the development team This can mean multiple things to multiple people. More than the technical execution aspect, the development teams need to breathe the product vision. The product features, their use, benefits must be very pronounced in their minds and they should be able to see how all of these tie into the overall product goals. The team must be able to visualize how the end user/customers will use the product. Why is this important to you as a product manager? If not, you will be turning into a developer, stepping into every minutes of the issues and development aspects. A huge time drain on your part. Plus the amount of bugs, features not meeting the acceptance criteria & delayed releases will all end up eating your time that could have been spent on more crucial activities. Product Managers are meant to be proactive and not reactive. Hence, the more you empower your team the more time you get to spend on Grooming the product backlog Capturing customer feedback Analysing the competition Expediting go-to-market Development team productivity and efficiency is a must to execute releases on time with high quality. Hence, story sizing, estimating and delivering requires the team to be conscious about how they track their time & optimize it. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 24

25. Practice Time Blocking Time blocking also known as the Pomodoro Technique is the best known technique for consistent peak performance. As product managers, it is important to identify your peak performance hours and block them for all your crucial activities. Do not accept any meeting requests or shoulder taps then. Decline politely. Plan for all the crucial decision making items then and knock them all one after another. Pomodoro Technique basically emphasizes that one take a break every 25 mins for 5min and then refocus on the activity. And take one 20-30mins after repeating the above 4-5times. Summary Time management is more about effectiveness rather than efficiency for product managers. Plan your day and week with activities that directly contribute to achieving the product goals. Set specific % of hours per day/week for the various meetings with different stakeholders. This way you will focus only on the must do activities rather than ok to do tasks. Remember, you do not have the luxury of free time that you can accommodate stuff that are not likely to help with the product goals. The more you disseminate information properly and reduce dependency, the more time you have to concentrate on refining the product. Product Managers prefer Orangescrum to centralize all product information exchange, maintain their backlogs, execute sprints and improve team velocity. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 25

26. Orangescrum helps product managers to collaborate contextually with their development team, make the team self-organized and execute seamlessly. It seems that there is not enough time in a day. But since we all get the same 24 hours, how do some people achieve so much more at the same time than others? The answer lies in good TIME MANAGEMENT. The secret lies in time management. Here’s a situation that gives you a jittery feeling… The project deadline is nearby. You only have a few hours left until you need to submit the final version of the project. Your heart beats fast, your knees bounce . . . What to do then? My friend, you need to learn better time management. So, what the heck is Time Management? Wikipediasays- “Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. It involves juggling © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 26

27. various demands upon a person relating to work, social life, family, hobbies, personal interests, and commitments with the finiteness of time. Using time effectively gives the person “choice” on spending/managing activities at their own time and utility”. In this post, I’ll discuss; The importance of Time Management Common problems with current Time Tracking Solutions How to fix these problems and grow your business with Orangescrum So without wasting much time, let’s get into the facts straight… The importance of Time Management: Whether we agree or not, time is valuable to us. All projects, big or small, require time. There are lots of ways to tackle the issue of time management – you can download apps, create lists, use different tools, etc. But if you don’t know why it’s important for you to better manage your time, then these apps or tools aren’t going to help you anymore. First of all, you need to take a moment to think about your time before you spend it. It will help improve your time management and productivity immediately. I used to think that time management is only a business tool, just like a calculator or a cell phone. It is something that helps you increase productivity and eventually costs you more money. Then I learned, time management is not a peripheral activity or skill. It is the core skill upon which everything else in personal and professional life depends. “Look upon Time Management as a vehicle that can take you from wherever you are today, to wherever you want to be in the future.” –Brian Tracy © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 27

28. 5 reasons why you need to be better at Time Management – Time is limited no matter how you slice it. If you want to rise through the ranks, you have to acknowledge the importance of finding a way to manage this limited resource You can accomplish more with less effort Improved decision-making can be achieved To become more successful in your career To reduce stress- You’re better able to estimate how long a given task will take you to complete, and you know you can meet the deadline. Benefits of Time Management: The ability to manage your time effectively is important. Good time management leads to more efficiency and productivity, less stress, less wasted time, and far more successful life. Here are some benefits of managing time effectively: Stress Relief– Making and following a task strategy makes a person feel less stressed and reduces anxiety. More Time– Proper time management gives you extra time to spend in your daily life. People who can manage their time effectively, spend fun times on hobbies or other personal pursuits. Ability to Realize Goal– Individuals who practice good time management are the ones to achieve their goals and objectives in a better way. Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it. So this was just a trailer of good time management. But what if you are suffering from poor time management? © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 28

29. Consequences of poor Time Management: Poor Workflow– The inability to work ahead and stick to the goals means poor efficiency. If there are several important tasks to complete, an effective plan is required to complete the tasks first. If you don’t plan before, it can lead to low productivity. Time Wastage– Poor time management results in wastage of time. For example- by juggling social media while doing an assignment, you are distracting yourself and wasting time. Poor Quality of Work– Bad time management makes the quality of your work suffer. Trying to complete the work at the last moment compromises quality. Poor Reputation:If clients can’t rely on you to manage your time to complete tasks, their expectations get affected. When it comes to a project manager, it is important to know the hours the resource is putting on different activities. Over time, accurate reporting of time by the resource helps the project manager to understand the performance of a particular type of activity. This information will be extremely useful for the estimation for the next projects, especially if the activities are similar. Furthermore, the proper time entry enables the project manager to check whether or not the spent hour(s) is exceeding the estimated hour(s) and mitigating the risks. And to get the same, Time Tracking comes into play. Role of Time Tracking- Time tracking offers several benefits for you and your business such as improved productivity and the ability to make more money for your business by billing for the exact hours you work. While you can log time on paper or a spreadsheet, there is a better way: Time Tracking Software. The software stores your information centrally, you don’t have to enter data manually. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 29

30. Benefits of Time Tracking for Your Business: Improves your productivity:Do you ever wonder where your day is spent? By tracking your time, you can get how you spent it and what the time killers are. Hence, you can easily improve productivity. Identifies areas that need improvement:Beyond identifying time wasters, time tracking lets you pinpoint tasks that are taking too long. You may benefit from gathering more details easily or limiting changes. Ensures invoices are correct: Many business owners bill by the hour. Track your time so that the final invoices are correct and your client is paying you for all working hours. Proper future project planning: Fortunately, with the help of time tracking, you can see how long similar projects took to create an accurate invoice and how much time a project took to complete. So, it helps to identify how much the project will cost and what more time it will take to finish. Time Tracking problems and their solutions: You can manually document your time in a spreadsheet, but that takes more time. The time tracking tool is a better option for this. They automatically track your resources’ working hour(s), billable/non-billable hour(s), and estimated hour(s). However, there is yet another problem: many time tracking tools have shortcomings: Keep track of non-project work: Most project managers are primarily interested in the time their team members spend on productive work. In most organizations, resource utilization is determined by comparing the number of available hours to the number of estimated hours. However, it’s also vital to understand what employees are doing with their non-project time. Creating specific tasks for different categories of non- project time such as paid time off, travel time and time spent on administrative tasks can put insight into how much extra time employees could be spending on their billable hours. © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 30

31. Applying time to the correct project or task: Projects can be complicated with hundreds of tasks and sub-tasks assigned to different team members. When team members search for their tasks, they suffer more and spend more time searching for their tasks. Orangescrum is time tracking software that practically solves this problem. It shows team members’ work details on a single platform. That means, being a project manager, you can check which team member spent more time doing his/her task, who spent less, how much billable and non-billable, etc. Getting Up-to-Date Time Tracking Information: As a project manager, you are expected to provide up-to-date information on your projects regularly. Mostly, employees don’t prefer micromanagement in their workplace. That is also a disadvantage for time tracking. If you are using older time tracking software, you may not be able to access the most recent time entry records. With the help of Orangescrum, resources can view their entered time in daily, weekly, and monthly formats. At the end of the month, they can submit the time reports to the managers. Once the time report is submitted, the entered time will be locked so further changes are prevented. Conclusion: Managers and administrators can go through various reports and monitor the time for various purposes. The combination of effective project planning, resource allocation to activities, and tracking of time add a lot of value for organizations that are managing multiple projects and resources. Regardless of what is preventing you from reporting on an accurate and timely basis, Orangescrum can help. With a simple user interface, automatic time tracking features, and real-time reporting capabilities, Orangescrum takes the frustration and confusion out of project management time tracking. Time is what we want most, but what we use worst… © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 31

32. Think about this limited resource and utilize it in a better way. Manage your time effectively and get the best out of it like a pro. Thank you for reading this post. Hopefully, you guys will like this. If you find it helpful, then please share it with your friends and colleagues and let them know the secret that is out now. Subscribe and get more related blogs. Orangescrum Cloud: https://www.orangescrum.com/ Open Source: https://www.orangescrum.org/ Blog: https://www.orangescrum.com/blog/ Email: support@orangescrum.com © 2011-2021|Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 32