The mum effect (an individual’s reluctance to report the exact position of failing software projects) is a major reason for the failure of IT projects, claims one research paper.
The reluctance to report, is not only restricted to reporting of deviations like in the above case, but in fact there is a general reluctance, in the service sector to report what they (employees, partners, directors) do on each day.
The timesheet reporting as it is called continues to pose a challenge to most of the professional firms and companies in IT and service sector in general.
The most common reasons of reluctance from the point of view of employees, are fear, big boss watching feeling, cumbersome nature of time sheet and most importantly perceived pointlessness of the whole exercise.
Another important reason of failure of timesheet reporting is the system for submission of timesheet reports on monthly basis, probably continuation of historical manual reporting practice.
In fact, submission of reports so late, makes recalling what a person did on each of the 30 days earlier, much more difficult. Thus, a perceived concession of allowing people to submit time sheet data monthly or weekly itself becomes a major stumbling block in the process of collecting accurate and reliable data.
The data collected in this manner is, in most of the cases, too late for any corrective action. Research has shown that every year trillions of dollars are lost globally simply due to ineffective time tracking and poor project management.
Now let’s understand the concept of Gambit
A gambit is a chess opening, in which a player sacrifices something with the aim of achieving a subsequent advantage.
For effective implementation of Eff factor, a time tracking and project management software, the new users were advised to consider the Gambit of granting a special time slot, like a tea break, at the end of each day for logging time into Eff factor.
This advice to Eff factor users involved sacrifice of sometime (say 10 minutes per employee per day) in return for extremely valuable and timely information which led to significant change in the efficiency and profitability of the firms.
However, with Eff factor’s new Timer feature (almost like the timer clock in the game of chess) for logging, the time to log comes down further to a few seconds per day and thus reduces the need to incur the cost of Eff factor gambit being advised earlier.
The timer feature ensures that time logs are
1. entered in Real-time (instead of at the end of the day earlier)
2. Effortless from the point of view of employees
3. least expensive in terms of time spent on logging
4. Removes disadvantages of periodic reporting
5. Results in quicker action at every level, saving millions of Rupees
6. Sharing benefits of improved performance with all the stakeholders, makes everybody see the point of using Eff factor.
For demo, please call on +919892128838 or mail us on contact@efffactor.com
