November 14, 2008 at 8:17 am
4 hours of project work per day, 2 hours of "things that fall out of the sky on my head" per day and 3 hours of meetings per day. Yes - I am in the office a solid none hours per day.
November 14, 2008 at 8:17 am
I am the working director of a small non-profit corporate software development team (two team members plus myself). I average about 3 hours a day of quality development time, including design work (my mind is almost always working on design regardless of what the clock says). We have a formal two-hour staff meeting each week to review the status of assigned projects. Occasionally I will attend a management meeting or a meeting to discuss potential new projects with customers. The rest of my time is spent supporting existing software systems (hi-level tech support) or providing guidance to my crew in one way or another.
In a perfect world, I would like to see my team (me included) score 7 hours a day of productive time. I do think you have to allow time for some social interaction to keep the morale high. And I also think you cannot sit back and just let nature take its course. Some team members need a little redirection from time to time in order to stay focused on their current assignment.
November 14, 2008 at 8:38 am
I am primarily a developer. My time is charged back to my organization's departments for whom I work. They are my customers. I have to look at productivity from the perspective of my customer. I tell them it will take 80 hours over two months to complete a task. If I get it done on time and within the budgeted dollars, they're happy; otherwise, I have to explain why it takes longer.
My customers measure my productivity by the cost of similar services. If it took me 80 hours to complete a project and it takes me 70 hours to complete a similar project this year, they see it as an increase in productivity.
November 14, 2008 at 8:38 am
I work as a developer on an Access->SQL application. The first year and a half i was working on it, i was the DBA as well (that was weird; i'm no admin). Eventually the client promoted one of their analysts to the DBA position. Since then, things have settled into a pretty regular routine. We have a ticket logging system where change requests are added, issues reported, etc. There are typically 20-30 tickets in at any given time. We recently had a lull in requests, where we battered the ticket count down to 15. Since then, there's been a flood of new tickets and i for one have been completely swamped. I have one other developer on my team who typically handles the simpler tickets, then submits them to me. That system allows us to keep the counts down and keep work moving on simple requests (< 2 hours work) that would otherwise have to wait days or even weeks before getting anything done. Unfortunately, that guy is out on vacation. I've been working at a breakneck pace for about 3 weeks now and the tickets continue to pile up. Since numbers of open tickets are a conveniently simple metric for management, i end up looking like i'm not working or working slow, despite the fact that i've been (pardon the phrase) busting my balls. I'd say on average i get in 5.5-6 hours of straight up work (coding stuff and doing it right the first time), but over the past several weeks it's turned into 8 straight hours of work that i increasingly have to refurbish, having missed something initially.
November 14, 2008 at 9:00 am
Depends on where I am and what I'm doing. If I'm away on business and working with a client, I can often do 9 or more hours of work a day. 6 or so at the client's site and then 3 or more in the evening preparing for the next day. I can't sustain that for more than 4 days though.
If I'm working from home, it depends when my deadlines are, what I'm busy with and how many things are on the work to-do list. it can be anything from 0 to 10.
Did I mention that I'm a consultant these days and mostly work from home.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
November 14, 2008 at 9:25 am
jkoon (11/14/2008)
4 hours of project work per day, 2 hours of "things that fall out of the sky on my head" per day and 3 hours of meetings per day. Yes - I am in the office a solid none hours per day.
none hours per day - was that a freudian slip? 😀
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November 14, 2008 at 9:41 am
As a technical project manager, I have found that planning on 8 hours of work is a recipe for over-commitment. The average qualified technical resource is FULLY ENGAGED at 80%, or 32 hours per week. Using this as the MAX billable time removes also minimizes the urge of overzealous managers to add the stupid, non-productive time buckets like "administrative", "responding to e-mail" and "meetings".
November 14, 2008 at 9:49 am
Tons of comments here I agree with, but a few of my own...
As a Data Architect I agree my brain is always working on design, no matter what I physically appear to be doing. As a Developer, I work the same way. I mean, there are times when I appear to be out smoking or staring blankly at a diagram but believe me the wheels are spinning! This time is the least quantifiable, I usually count it as about 30% productive.
As a consultant, I also consider research and learning to be part of my job, and part of what I am being paid for--to know the latest and greatest and be able to apply it quickly and efficiently. Sometimes I do it on the clock, when it applies directly to a problem, and sometimes off, but it is to my clients' benefit and I have found mostly they understand this and don't stress if they catch my screen pointing to a blog or MSDN. This time is about 40% productive and 60% just fun (but maybe I have a twisted view of 'fun').
I believe that some meetings, such as code review or design sessions, can be extremely productive if they don't meander, so I don't discount all meetings. Of course in consulting I am freed from change control and project management tedium, so I am able to charge through those hours that would be otherwise lost (and please note I do not discount these for management personnel, just for myself as a consultant with little authority in these matters). I find I am able to use some tasks, such as organization, documentation (inline and paper), or repetetive coding as part of my brain's necessary 'downtime', saving these hours for 'work' as well.
As far as socializing and networking, I am an extremely introverted (INTJ) person, so this is a lot of work for me--difficult and sometimes annoying. I count this time as about 25% productive, as it is required for smooth teamwork and working relationships, and I am not prone to let it take over an extended time period.
All told, I usually get in 5-6 hours of work a day with the rest devoted to daily distractions and task switching. I consider myself a very hard worker and results oriented; I feel best in a day when I've had two solid 2-hour blocks of nothing but straight output work, and a few hours of everything else.
:smooooth:
😎 Kate The Great :w00t:
If you don't have time to do it right the first time, where will you find time to do it again?
November 14, 2008 at 10:30 am
hodgy (11/14/2008)
I will probably get somewhere between 4-5 hours of solid "work" out of an 8 hour day. However, the time when I am not heads-down coding, testing, documenting, etc, my brain is able to think about problems that I have been struggling with.I have lost count of the number of times that a beautiful, simple solution has popped into my head at the most bizarre of moments, because I have been able to let it tick away in the back of my head without much conscience thought to muddy the waters.
Tom
I agree on both counts (about 4 hours on an average day, and real solutions come at odd times). On a really productive day I might put in ten good hours out of an 11 or 12 hour work day, but I can't keep that up on a regular basis without performance degrading.
There have been studies done (no, I can't quote them) which have shown a group which "wastes" time talking about non-work related things is more productive over all than a group which is flogged to avoid any non-work discussions.
November 14, 2008 at 10:35 am
Andy Warren (11/14/2008)
From time to time it's useful to look at where you time goes and ask yourself (or your team) are those things in the right proportion? Are we doing enough 'real' work?...
It's easy as an employee to say that you don't want to be measure on hours of productivity but only on tasks completed. The problem with that is that in general you're paid based on hours. Imagine hiring a plumber at $75/hour and watching them stop to answer a few instant messages, or knock out a blog post because they just learned something really cool while fixing your problem. Would you have a problemw with that? Yeah! On the other hand, if you were paying them a flat fee to fix it, you'd be a lot more tolerant of the time it took to get done, other than if it turned into all day and you had to sit there with them.
I don't know about your company, but I don't get overtime here and neither do most of the employees (we are classified as "exempt" from work regulations). In fact we were recently reminded that full-time exempt employees must work 5 days a week, at a minimum (unless on vacation or holiday), and must work 40 hours per week, at a minimum (ditto), and are expected to usually put in about 45 hours per week. For the same salary. So, yes, we are being paid a flat fee, rather than by the hour.
November 14, 2008 at 10:41 am
brightbillconsulting (11/14/2008)
1) Some industries, such as the legal profession often bill considerably more hours than worked....
2) Even slave labor needs to drink, eat, and go the the bathroom.
1) I know I was surprised to learn that legal services are rounded up to the nearest quarter hour usually. That means when you talk to a lawyer you may as well keep talking for about 15 minutes, because that is what you'll be charged for.
2) In my twenties I took a one-night job helping to count election returns for the county, and the b*tch supervisor wouldn't let us go to the bathroom until our break!
November 14, 2008 at 10:44 am
Anonymous post #1:
Hello Steve,
Let’s not forget that as “Knowledge Workers” – we carry our brains around (most of us anyways) 24-7.
That means that, when we are commuting, in front of the TV during a muted commercial, walking the dog, or any other task that does not require much brain bandwidth, we are often pondering solutions for that project or issue that arose while we were at work! There have been many times that I came up with a solution to a nagging problem “after hours”.
The reality is we don’t just work an 8 hour day like say, a factory worker, who’s productivity ceases the moment he clocks out. Our product is our innovations that come at anytime, day or night.
This is absolutely correct. Many times I have thought of a new approach as I wake up in the morning. Should I have billed for REM sleep?
November 14, 2008 at 10:46 am
jpowers (11/14/2008)
Anonymous post #1:
Hello Steve,
Let’s not forget that as “Knowledge Workers” – we carry our brains around (most of us anyways) 24-7.
That means that, when we are commuting, in front of the TV during a muted commercial, walking the dog, or any other task that does not require much brain bandwidth, we are often pondering solutions for that project or issue that arose while we were at work! There have been many times that I came up with a solution to a nagging problem “after hours”.
The reality is we don’t just work an 8 hour day like say, a factory worker, who’s productivity ceases the moment he clocks out. Our product is our innovations that come at anytime, day or night.
This is absolutely correct. Many times I have thought of a new approach as I wake up in the morning. Should I have billed for REM sleep?
Goes on the invoice as R&D - REM & Dreams
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"stewsterl 80804 (10/16/2009)I guess when you stop and try to understand the solution provided you not only learn, but save yourself some headaches when you need to make any slight changes."
November 14, 2008 at 10:49 am
Jack Corbett (11/14/2008)
I find it hard to quantify what is "productive". Is answering a question on SSC productive? The short-term answer is probably "No", but long-term I would say, "Yes". Mainly because I consider time on SSC as professional development ...
I agree. I try to balance out tasks to give my mind a rest. Sometimes it is reading on SSC, or taking an SSC tutorial, sometimes it is reading a chapter in a business-oriented book. Then I can go back to the other work and not feel as much stress. And the learning break is a good mental exercise.
November 14, 2008 at 11:00 am
Chris.Strolia-Davis (11/14/2008)
First, When I am working on something that I really love doing, I often complete that work faster and with much higher quality than work that is not high on my list.Talent also counts. There are times when I have easily accomplished in minutes what colleagues and coworkers have spent hours or days working on. Sometimes this is due simply to an affinity I have for the work and other times it is because I happen to have knowledge that those others didn't have. Of course, there are also times when I have managed to really complicate some very simple tasks.
..
So, I think when it comes to scheduling, it really comes down to knowing your team. Knowing their strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes and pairing them with the right jobs as much as possible. It also takes good communication. If someone has a major life event, for instance, that can be really distracting.
Very good points. I think this gets back to the point made by other posters about the key metric being quantity of work performed (tasks accomplished) rather than just hours put in at the job.
If someone is grinding away diligently at something for a full 8 hours, but you complete the task in 4 hours and have time to study a new concept, then chat with your co-workers, then play with a code feature, or create a test database to try some new T-SQL code, I would say you are more productive than the first person.
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