Should Time Tracking Be Used in Highly Agile Environments?

Over the last two decades, Agile methodology has come a long way. It helps organizations be flexible and lead projects to their end goal within the predetermined timeframe and budget. The Agile methodology requires continuous planning, testing, and integration, making it significant for teams and organizations to track their time. Agile development refers to a set of project management methodologies that turns a business need into sizable and measurable modules that can be implemented very quickly. Agile follows an iterative system design and allows customers to review the product at different stages and suggest alterations if needed within a short span of time.

Agile methodology is always evolving and can make time tracking feel old school. If you’re wondering if they can play well together, they can! When it comes to Agile development, developers themselves are ultimately the ones who are responsible for managing time and work. Using a comprehensive time tracking solution like Replicon helps developers, managers, and the entire organization effortlessly track their time, manage and distribute their workload, and achieve a balanced pace without burnout. Still not convinced? Take a look at these practical ways time tracking is effective in an Agile environment and how Replicon’s solution can make it easy.

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Resource Utilization

The topmost priority for every organization is continuous growth and success; however, allocating resources to a project does not guarantee that. The resources must be utilized effectively to get a better outcome, and it becomes more critical when the company is handling multiple projects simultaneously. While the number of hours in a day can’t be increased, tracking time helps track the developer’s workload and idle hours. With continuously updated estimates, management will have all the visibility necessary to minimize developer workbench time and maximize billable hours.

Replicon helps you enhance profits and resource utilization by setting productivity targets against which the actual resource utilization is measured. You will be able to evaluate how efficiently each resource is utilized by setting targets at the individual level and measuring the performance at the individual, group, company, or project level. You can also track productivity in real-time with instantly updated estimates provided by Agile teams. Replicon’s comprehensive dashboard also allows you to track the current utilization and future availability of your resources to facilitate smooth allocations. The dashboard also provides data about projects generating higher revenue.

100 Percent Accurate Billing

For Agile development, clients are usually billed on an hourly basis as it allows rapid development, easy change tracking, and accurate billing without interrupting the development process. In this case, hourly billing helps organizations avoid flat bidding by charging the client for the exact amount of time invested. Organizations need to create invoices as certain milestones of projects are reached and they can’t wait until the end of the week/month to bill the client. Therefore, it is very important to have the right solution to enable users to submit their timesheets instantly. Tracking time and billing effortlessly saves developers from making unnecessary modifications, ultimately saving the developers from engaging in unprofitable ventures.

With Replicon, Agile teams can submit their timesheets as soon as the task is complete, enabling accounting teams to bill clients in real time. You can track your billable and non-billable hours efficiently and assign them to different clients. You can even configure billing rates that get auto-applied while calculating billing information. With its plug-and-play capabilities, Replicon can easily integrate with any business software that you may be using across accounting, invoicing, payroll, etc., to transfer billing data without manual errors or overhead.

Project Time Estimate

According to PMI, inadequate project time estimation is the root cause for many failed projects. In his book on the fallacies of software engineering, Robert Glass also suggests that poor estimation is one of the top two causes of project failure. The fact is that no one can stop the time; however, it is possible to overcome its looming effect by accurately determining how much time it will take to complete particular project tasks. Accurate project time estimation is the force that pushes precise project forecasting and budgeting.

Keep in mind, Agile project estimates can’t or shouldn’t be calculated like a traditional project estimation. An Agile environment makes deadlines hard to pin down because of flexible scopes, changing deliverables, and alterations.

Replicon’s accurate time tracking capabilities help you obtain reliable historical data for better project time. Replicon helps you estimate considering all the factors that influence that project completion. You will know how much time a task will take to complete. Replicon’s dashboard not only gives you a centralized view of all your project hours, costs, and data, but it also provides information that helps you make decisions to reduce project expenses and boost revenues.

Predict Project Profitability

Project profitability is profoundly different on Agile projects than it is on traditional projects. Agile projects can generate revenue with the very first step of delivery and grow with each new delivery. But to make that happen, management needs to measure current project costs, slash unprofitable projects before they become a sinkhole of losses, and choose new projects with a greater chance of success. This is only possible when time is tracked and correctly divided among projects and accurate resource allocation is done. By collecting this information, organizations can more accurately determine the project profitability and tailor projects according to end goals.

Organizations thinking of remodeling their workforce as per post-pandemic workplace requirements need a solution, such as Replicon’s project time tracking software, that can accurately track employee time without hassle. It is designed with pre-built and custom templates to help project managers track time the way they want. Replicon’s solution is mobile-ready, which lets you make updates on the go, ensuring that you are not missing any client billable hours.

Get Rid of Skepticism

The high level of adaptability of Agile methodology does not imply that the Agile team can be left unaccountable. However, it is important to track time because of the flexibility and ever-evolving nature of the technology and for obtaining valuable information about project delivery, estimates, resource availability, compliance, and billing.

How successfully your Agile team performs significantly depends upon how you track and manage time. If you want to give time tracking a try for your Agile team, we’re willing to help. You can scale and customize Replicon’s project time tracking solution according to your needs and growth. Replicon is global, mobile, secure, and acts as a single source of truth for all project time tracking needs.

Check out our case study to discover how our customers have benefited from using Replicon.

Learn How We Enabled Better Investment Decisions By Simply Tracking Time

Download the Case Study