

Ask HN: Do you use timetracking at your startup? - czzarr

If so, what software do you use ? If not, what project management software do you use ?
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c3
At entp we used a custom-built time tracker that works a bit like twitter; you
tell it what you're working on (projects are referenced with @projectname and
individual tickets with #1234) and it tracks the time between status updates
to that project. It shows what everyone's latest status is, so it's good for a
team to get visibility into everyone.

It's open source! <https://github.com/entp/xtt>

We used it extensively when we were mainly a widely distributed consulting
company (4 countries, 4 US states, 20 devs) and continued using it after we
dropped the clients. It's useful to see the hard costs of building certain
features and even entire apps; there's also a ton of useful data about how
many hours people are pulling a week, what time we show up for work, as well
as the basic "what are you working on?"

However, the dev team is pretty small right now so we have ditched the time
tracking. We are moving to a new tool that we're building which focuses more
on how you feel about what you're working on.

~~~
rudasn
Courtney, can I contact you about your new tool ("how you feel about what
you're working on")? I think there are some ideas we could share. My email is
my username at gmail.

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arethuza
By "timetracking" do you mean getting people to record what they have been
spending their time doing? Unless you are billing customers for time, why
would you want to do that?

Far better in my opinion to focus on end results (feature X will be ready by
date Y) than micromanaging progress by tracking time and assuming that this
linearly corresponds to progress made.

~~~
c3
Obsessive metrics are fun.

Knowing how long things took vs estimates is useful for determining the
accuracy future estimates.

Having an absolute sense of numbers for types of projects is useful for
estimating future projects of similar scope; where by absolute I mean, not, "I
think it took two weeks last time we did this".

~~~
jms_
When it comes to startups I'm not sure you can prioritise things like this
over actually working on your product.

Also, if you're measuring and refining your estimates, they stop being
'estimates' and become something far less useful. If you have problems with
estimates being inaccurate, try not estimating.

There are far more interesting metrics to measure rather than flogging a dead
horse.

~~~
Mamady
I agree - time tracking on a granualar level is very high friction and ends up
being a waste of time. Better to focus on things that bring more ROI, like
product.

Unless your billing on an hourly basis, chances are that counting hours is too
much micromanagement.

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smackfu
Whatever solution you choose, there are two key points:

1) Make it as frictionless as possible for the people tracking their time, or
you will inevitably have people not doing it, and then someone has to hound
them, and then they just put in junk data just to stop the hounding. Your "to
the hour" metrics end up just being junk.

2) If you aren't actually using the data, don't make people track their time
"just in case". Or at least assign it a real cost, and say, "Is this data
worth 2% of my payroll to me?" In poorly run companies, this tends to be a
classic example of management wasting the employees time for no reason, just
because someone said they were supposed to do time tracking but management
never gets around to using the data for anything.

~~~
czzarr
I am actually an employee of my startup, and what you described in 1) is
exactly what is happening. We use dotproject which is probably one of the
worst piece of software ever shipped, and the data is used but nowhere near a
goal that is worth the pain.

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shabble
My (as yet unobtained) goal is to get familiar enough with org-mode[1] and
figure out a personal workflow that fits with my company, so that I can manage
a planning/clocking setup along the lines of <http://doc.norang.ca/org-
mode.html#Clocking>

It's complicated by a couple of factors:

* nobody else at work would be using the same system (but we don't use anything anyway)

* I don't use emacs for mail, and haven't yet got it to talk to google calendar in a sensible fashion

* my elisp is about as good as any of my other lisps, which is practically nothing.

On the plus side:

* Evidence based scheduling - I'm a crap planner, and being able to compare estimates with reality would be the first step towards fixing it.

* I could stop making up arbitrary numbers of hours worked on a given project, and actually provide some evidence.[2]

* Formalising a workflow would help keep me on track when I'm not sure what needs doing next.

* Having a tracker/agenda/scheduler/outliner all together makes for some interesting integration potential.

[1] <http://orgmode.org/> \- outliner with all sorts of extra shineys for
Emacs.

[2] Less unethical than it sounds - I'm basically subtracting out the time I
spend faffing around on the internet. But I suspect I'm sometimes too generous
with my subtractions.

------
kandu
I am currently using toggl (<http://www.toggl.com>). I am not using it for
billing nor for monitoring employees, but for monitoring how I spend time. The
purpose is to balance work between my several projects on which I work
concurrently, and also to avoid procrastination and wasting time on
distractions.

I spent a lot of time (pun intended), i.e. about half a day, on searching a
time tracker that would fit my needs. I was not interested in features related
to billing clients, and thus I found too expensive the services that seem to
be most popular, like Harvest, whose pricing starts at $12 per month if one
works on more than 2 projects. I would not pay more than $1 per month for a
simple time tracking service. I needed a web application / service, as opposed
to client software, since I work on multiple computers. Also, the ideal
service that I was looking for would have an Android app such that I could
track time when I'm not using a computer.

Toggl does all of these within the free plan, however it is somehow buggy -
the Android app, the desktop app and the web service do not synchronize well
and I am kind of forced to use just the web service through a browser.

I would be interested to find out about other apps that would do the job.

~~~
kmed
Another great app to check out is TSheets (<http://www.tsheets.com>). I have
no problem clocking in from my Droid or any computer - or even by simply
sending a text!

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prawn
Used to use a very basic and dorky app called TraxTime but since the start of
the year, have been using a web-app which I built myself. We call it Punch.

Company of three web developers clocking time and billing clients. Punch runs
in a little Chrome window on the side of our second monitors. I can keep track
of what the other guys have been, or are, working on; check our general
productivity; it handles invoicing, and can give me hints on which clients are
strong earners and which are a waste of time.

I don't need crazy CRM features, but have been thinking about quickly adding
in a list showing neglected clients (so we can contact them and see if they
have any maintenance needing to be done).

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mbesto
If you are talking about time tracking as far as project management goes and
not for how many hours to bill to client, then I don't believe in using one.

Why? In most cases you are using time tracking as a way to provide metrics for
productivity or compensation. Once employees are incentivized to do a task
within a certain time frame (i.e. average ticket close less than 2 hours) they
will focus more on the end result (closing the ticket) rather than the actual
task at hand (fixing the issue). For example in software development this can
lead to developers who take shortcuts to simply fix the problem, but not
necessarily fix the problem effectively (i.e. bad code).

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manuelflara
I use Freckle for myself, since I feel I'm more productive if I track what I
spend my time (on the computer) doing. It's a bit like tracking your weight,
wether you're on a diet or not. Just being aware of it is enough :)

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easy_rider
I use toggl, but since I've only serving private client contact at at the
moment, i'm using Freshbooks for invoicing (one client = free). They have
their own timetracking, so considering to use their feature instead of Toggl.
Regardless I have good experience with toggl, expecially since it allows
exporting to CSV/XML/PDF which allows for rapid coupling with any invoicing
system or own project management tools.

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moeffju
I'm using mite (<http://mite.yo.lk/>) for my freelance work, bit we don't use
time tracking at our startup. The tech guys measure productivity by checking
or crossing out squares on a squared notepad, but that's exclusively for self-
assessment: How much time do I spend working productively, how much is wasted
on interruptions, etc.

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potomak
I'm using Tomatoes (<http://tomatoes.heroku.com>)

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bergie
We use BaseCamp, but with some custom tools for better visualization and
analysis:
[http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/business_analytics_with_couchdb_an...](http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/business_analytics_with_couchdb_and_noflo/)

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jonah
OfficeTime is the best simple time tracking app I've found so far. (It's not a
project management tool or anything like that. Just a low friction way to
track time.) It does some reporting and the data can be exported.

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kmed
YES! I didn't and wish I had. It's worth checking out TSheets
(<https://www.tsheets.com>) for tracking your time spent on several
projects/clients. Good luck!

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Egregore
We are using BriskProject, but we're not using timetracking feature, because
it imposes deadlines and we're already in a lot of stress.

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leftnode
Slimtimer - <http://slimtimer.com> \- it's pay what you want model.

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chrisrickard
Setkick doesn't use anytime management software (yet), but we do a lot of
project management via Podio.

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rimantas
How does one time track thinking? Especially the one during driving,
showering, eating a lunch, etc…

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n00kie
Timetracking (external customers): toggl.com Project management:
pivotaltracker.com

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nfm
We manage projects with Trello, and track time with our very own Paydirt.

