Why time tracking is critical for project resource management

When talking about time tracking, project resource management is never too far from that discussion. The problem is time tracking has generally been looked at as a payroll function by companies and more or less as a chore by employees. A thing you do often to get paid or thing you do to feel like your employer is trying to keep tabs on you. 

I believe the real benefit of Time Tracking lies in tracked time used for project resource management/allocation and not for payroll what so ever. Time should be tracked to manage the resources that are available for a project and employees working on the project should be tracking time because that will help them better use the time resource to get the best possible outcome for the project.

More often than not what we see is, that projects go over budget. When we find out that they are headed in that direction it is often too late. What if time tracking is used as the tool to manage and allocate project resources that will help prevent that from happening and employees look at time tracking as something that helps them with their job and is not a chore.

Where the benefit to time tracking shines brightly is using the time to track the progress of a project and to get an early indication whether it is headed in the intended direction. This will allow us to see where the project stands and should paint a very clear picture about if the project will be completed within allocated time, long before we are discussing why the project went over budget again. You need the best possible information to make the best possible decision for any situation and this is what using time as a resource will do. Based on all this information we can be proactive when managing a project rather than being reactive.

As someone smart once said “Time is Money” it holds true here.

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