Time capture - In-house Creative Agency

[GlennJo]

HI, Im Glenn - currently sitting in Orlando airport on my way back from LEAP and already wish I had more time to meet up with more Creatve inhouse agencies - would have been great at LEAP if the experience zone also had areas specifically for different interests groups - just like this community site. Anyway, my question / topic. After LEAP we are probably looking to start time capture, but beforre this we need to go through the long process of estimating 'hours' per task across all of our departments and across 70 templates we use. Does anyone jhave any tips or experience of what did and did not work. All info. greatly appreciated. Thanks Glenn

[RianaBo]

Agree! It was such a great networking experience but wish I could have found others looking for answers or solutions in the same interest areas immediately to make the most of the time. RE: Planned Hours Estimating This may be obvious but alignment (with dept heads or resource managers) on where you end up on hours / project phase or task is KEY. Rolling out templates (with planned hours) without discussion with the SMEs of a particular project phase or those tasks will ruffle feathers from those on your project team. They want to know that someone who does what they do had input. If I were to do this again I would take a first stab at hours so the SME you are working with has something to react to. Let that SME know you did that not to assume or dictate but to save them time. They'll appreciate that. :) Also - If you are not a PM I would ask someone who has insight on level of effort from beginning to end of the project lifecycle / process to take the first stab. Otherwise you may have to set up multiple meetings/work sessions with each SME to capture hours per task. Hope this is helpful. Good luck.

[GlennJo]

Thanks Riana, some useful tips. we are still toying with whether we should use this function. While I see the benefits of course, its whether or not this will restrain us from being as reactive as we want to be.

[Carol-LynJa]

Hi Glenn, So glad you were able to attend Leap! I love your feedback about the Experience Zone and we're already working on plans for expanding the networking options for our special interest groups for Leap 2017. Thanks! Carol-Lyn

[GlennJo]

Thats great news, definatetly would help connect all those 800 attendees!! look forward to next year.

[KarenRu]

Hey Glenn, Two points: 1) I agree w/Riana- it's helpful to get the SME's to weigh in on how long they think it will take to get a task done. I would ask the head of each resource group to look at the existing templates to put their best guesses in for time. And then over time as you start to capture time against your estimates- you can see how you are tracking and adjust accordingly. 2) We haven't implemented Workfront yet (going live July 1st). But a year and half ago when I started my new position- the first thing I did was roll out timesheets- so luckily I have a year and half worth of data to inform the templates I'm working on now- so I'll let the resource manager's review the estimated hours I'm populating into my templates- but it's based on actual data. I'm also going to ask the resources assigned to tasks to be responsible for looking at the hours that have been assigned to the tasks they are working on- and raise any red flags when they are assigned to something- to "keep it real". I'm tryting to get everyone engaged in the process. Hope that's helpful! Karen

[GlennJo]

Thanks Karen, useful advice. I caught up with Racheal Duplain at LEAP and she advised the same process of estimating. many thanks Glenn