Logging Time

[maura-k]

We currently do not have any of our users log time within Workfront. The planned hours are assigned based on the average time it takes to complete a task based on our best guess and we run reports based on the planned hours rather than actual hours to forecast and see work completed. We are wanting to use Resource Planning more to monitor bandwidth which is making me think we should start having our users track time. It will give us more accurate insight into how many hours each team member spends on work in Workfront each week and it will help us to ensure our planned hours are accurate. I have been hesitant to venture down this path in the past because of issues we have had with adopting new processes (even when it makes their life easier). This can be a touchy subject because it is monitoring where people are spending their time and they are concerned with how that will affect their performance reviews.

Has anyone gone from not tracking time to tracking time in Workfront? If so, can you provide some input on adoption, how you were able to implement it, and benefits you've seen since implementing?

[KristenS_WF]

I'm not sure I can offer you much guidance/input as we're just starting to make the same transition.

We're starting to use logged time to right-size planned hours in our templates and to get a better gauge of our resource capacity (actual hours isn't a particularly helpful metric for us--I've noticed that if a user marks a task as complete without first clicking on 'Start Task,' no actual hours are recorded).

One of my colleagues has been running regular reports (monthly, I think) to identify users who are completing tasks without logging hours for those tasks (and asking those folks to go back and add their best guesses as to the time).  I think we've seen better adoption (and smaller reports) over the last few months.

There's been some minor grumbling, but we've been pretty upfront with folks that this is part of an effort to make sure we have the right amount of time and staff allotted to work (rather than looking over their shoulders; we also don't do time cards in WF--those are in a separate system).

[NicholeVargas]

@maura-k Back in February, the Workfront Customer Success team hosted a customer panel on Logging Time, so it may be worth watching / downloading a copy of the slide deck (here is the Community post). There were 4 customers who participated in the panel, all sharing recommendations for how to get started, communicating this new change with users, reports to help surface the data and more.