Technology Engineered

Measuring Time

Mantra: If you expect to improve a process, you must first be able to measure its efficiency. Otherwise, you don't know (other than intuitively, ie just having a hunch) whether or not you're making progress.

As developers, one of the ways we can improve our work efficiency is by measuring the time we spend on a task. This gives us a number of benefits:

• We can measure and compare times from one execution to the next, make observations about the methods we used, and determine what works better by comparing the methods used against the time spent.
• We can use the statistical data to create better estimations of the time it will take to complete a task. This can be a huge benefit when preparing project bids.

To make it easier to keep track of time, you can use a tool like Rachota to automatically keep track of how long you spend on a task. You tell it what you're working on, do your work, click the Relax button if you take a break, and click Done when you're done. You can switch tasks in the middle, too. Once you've done your work, it gives you graphs of time spent so that you can easily compare the figures.

Remember the mantra: Measure, Improve.

posted by Adam Payne @ 12:44 PM permalink