They say that 3 things are certain in life — death, taxes and unfilled time-sheets.

Ever since there have been time-sheets on projects, there have been people slacking off in filling time-sheets, on projects.

Ask the finance person / team which creates invoices for your clients:

How many times have they had to delay sending their invoices because team members haven’t filled time-sheets?

How many reminders have they had to give people to fill in time-sheets?

How many times have they resorted to name and shame the slackers on Slack channels or notice boards?

And then one fine day, after waiting for weeks (…or a 10th reminder…) people open their time-sheets and go “8–8–8–8….” like a robot… :-)

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So why is this malaise SO common?

Probably because filling in time-sheets is not considered part of our ‘daily job’. Perhaps, it is not defined strongly enough as a KRA.

You are expected to code / test software, or manage projects as your core job. Filling time-sheets on the other hand, is considered as an after-thought (…it’s something that you have to also do…).

Therefore, there is a lack of seriousness in filling it in. Therefore, we go weeks without filling it in. And therefore, when we HAVE to fill it in, it seems like a tedious chore.

But what if it was a daily Agile ritual?

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As Agile teams, we’re pretty serious about our standups, aren’t we? We hardly miss it, even though it’s a daily activity. We never forget it.

And it’s not because of the dreaded ice cream meter. It’s because we realise the value of conducting it as a daily Agile practice. It’s no longer a chore, but our daily responsibility.

So why can’t we include filling time-sheet as a daily Agile ritual?

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At Technogise, our daily standups always start 10 minutes earlier than the actual call. These 10 minutes are dedicated for teams to fill their time-sheets. So it’s not just “what I did yesterday”, but “how many hours I spent doing it”… :-)

Why 10 minutes? Because at Technogise, we bill our clients for the actual hours we put in to deliver their projects. Therefore, it takes more time to fill the sheet.

It has been working well so far for us. Unfilled time-sheets are certainly less of a problem now, than before.

Can this be a successful experiment in the long term? Only time will tell… :-)