Efficient management of time

3/14/2011 3:15 PM

 From my practice, experience, and after talking with many colleagues, I have come to the conclusion that projects have cycles that could be plotted perfectly by a sine wave.  The X-axis represents time and the Y-axis represents the effort or time actually worked on the project.  The 0 (zero)  on the Y-axis represents the time of a regular workday.  

projects and a lack of knowledge about the technology being used in them (indicated by the red zone I). In this stage, employees generally resort to using overtime to fill the gaps.
There are other times when work loads are low (indicated by the green zone II), when employees have free time that is often not used.

The trend is that on long-term projects the workload is stabilized because the employees gain experience both about the client´s industry and the technology being used.  Consequently, employees become more efficient and can satisfy their client in a shorter amount of time. However, sometimes extra-time is needed to achieve the required  level of quality.  This can be problematic when the client is not willing to wait.  This often results in the creation of unnecessary friction and / or the breaking of contracts.  This is also frustrating from the developer´s viewpoint because they spend a large amount of time and effort.  While they feel as if they have learned nothing or that their clients are always unhappy.

The strategy we propose is to take advantage of the times when employees have a low workload.  We plan to use this time for skilled training in project technologies.  This will result in employees being better prepared to handle the situations in times of high workloads.  Efficiency will be improved by acquiring knowledge when employees have smaller workloads.  This will improve the level of professionalism within the company and increase customer satisfaction.

One difficulty is that low-load moments in the project is that they are not predictable due to that can occur at any time, so it is important that everyone knows to take this time to proactively train and to become versed in the short-term gain in quality of life and recognition from their peers and superiors.

As shown in the chart, projects have stages where the workload is high.  This is due to the difficulties of the projects.   These difficulties are the result of a lack of knowledge about the specific