• Time management is the problem for small businesses.
• ETA: Estimate Track Analyze

Estimate

• Identify Tasks
  • Billable vs. Non-Billable
• Assign Tasks
• Estimate Tasks
  • Employees have to estimate their own tasks otherwise Sales unrealistically drives Development
  • Empowers employees to have power over what they do.
  • Estimate in hours, 1-10 hours per task.
    • Don't go more than 10 hours or you'll get too vague
    • JonLax: Something we struggle with is being able to set out at the start of a three month engagement and identify tasks over the next 90 days. We accept that it's an illusion and we can only roughly say that in about six weeks we'll likely do X.
    • MikeGlenn: Clients want the world and you can't give them that. So we follow a specific process where we start with an Architecture and Design Document and break it out into phases.

An interesting discussion broke out here about whether you should charge clients the cost to build something or whether you should price based on value. To be continued...

• Estimates vs. Quotes
  • Estimates are rough and we finalize them after the Architecture and Design Document.
  • Quotes are exact and we stand behind the final number.

• Architecture and Design Document
  • A contract as to what will be built and what won't.
  • They own this and they can choose not to work with us after this point.
  • JonLax: we don't go beyond the A&DD point so we can't use a costing workbook to define the components to build. We know what a team costs for a period of time so we know that things like this take about six weeks and we know what the cost is for that time. We tell clients in advance that it might shift a little but our breakdowns are more for the client's benefits.

• Schedule Tasks
  • Hire a Project Manager (PM) if you can
  • Wrangles us into line and keeps us on schedule as much as possible keeping in mind that clients shift their focus all the time.

• How much can you do in a day?
  • How much BILLABLE work can you do in a day?
  • JonLax: We use 1500 billable hours a year for capacity.
  • MikeGlenn: We use 20 hours a day for senior people.
  • Extreme programming teams consider .3 to .33 of an hour as productive.
  • JonLax: Lawyers set a target of 1800 hours for associates
  • MikeBeltzner: Lawyers charge very differently than software/web companies and charge for things that people never would (e.g.: photocopies, emails, etc.)

...and back to the Value vs. Cost conversation. Lawyers bill by six minute increments and if we want to be billing for the time we spend, should we do that? And back to the presentation...

• Set targets
  • What do I want to make in a year? What are my costs?
  • Work backwards to targets.
  • Make reasonable goals for yourself.
  • AnthonyLewis: If you want to charge the value for something then that's a different sales approach. Things like brand (e.g.: Bruce Mau) become important.

TRACK

• Time each task
• Watch task time

ANALYZE

• Daily analysis of your own timers
• Weekly analysis of the group
  • Not analysing on a regular basis will kill you if you're a freelancer
• Important questions
  • Did I meet my billable targets?
  • What's my target history?
    • This gives you access to trends in billing patterns and targets
• Perform Post-mortem
  • Review where we went wrong
  • Look over the hours that we spent
  • What was over?

• JonLax: We do things very differently. We didn't track time at the beginning because there were only two of us. Time tracking becomes a way for people to validate their jobs so the data is bad. We look at it from a macro point: we have a profit target that we have to hit and as long as we hit it. We're about to start tracking it in the new year not for profitability but because there's a dollar value project that we don't make money at. We need to understand what work we should be turning away. I really want to understand that.
  • DanielBurka: We're in the same place and we want to look at it from a total value of the project as well.
  • JonLax: We manage revisions by issuing a change order.