What do you think - I have all the good ideas? Readers respond to some recent items: Bob (or should I say Dear Abbey), I feel Puzzled's pain (Monday, May 5, 2003). I have a similar operations scenario and this is how I handle it. My team opens a ticket for every request from a user. Our process is to acknowlege the request, assign it to a tech specialist, respond to the request, and close it. For those occasions What do you think – I have all the good ideas? Readers respond to some recent items:Bob (or should I say Dear Abbey),I feel Puzzled’s pain (Monday, May 5, 2003). I have a similar operations scenario and this is how I handle it. My team opens a ticket for every request from a user. Our process is to acknowlege the request, assign it to a tech specialist, respond to the request, and close it. For those occasions when we need to coordinate on matters not directly billable to any specific task, we charge our time to a “bucket” I call planning and coordination. I have other buckets for status reporting, education, sick time, vacation, and holidays. Whenever a team member charges more than what has been established a reasonable amount of time to a bucket, I have a discussion with them. This kind of segmentation of the “respond to” actions, versus the “planned” development actions helps me and my client better understand the subtleties and nuances you spoke of.Regards, Puzzler Dudeand … Dear Mr. Lewis:Re: the person with the evil management tracking system, who doesn’t spend 100% of his/her time programming.As a former pointy haired manager who implement such a system, here is my response: Push back HARD to see that this system tracks all the activities actually done. A system that doesn’t allow the tracking of routine, time-consuming activities is way off base. (Assuming reasonably intelligent management) managers really want to know what their people are doing, and if 40% of their time is spent on non-production tasks, they would really benefit from that knowledge.Ken Hirsohnand finally … Dear Bob …I found the answer to this problem [in my own version of this situation]. I added in a line to the management report which read:Function: Time wasted devising and running reports that we could have spent doing the job. Time: Most of itManagement never asked for details again, and productivity and service levels went up.Bob’s Last Word: The need to keep track of where employees spend their time is real. The value it provides to the corporation is real. The problem is GIGO – garbage in, garbage out. The companies in which employees keep track of their time as it’s truly spent are very rare. Usually, employees record their time every one or two weeks, scratching their heads trying to report a reasonable compromise between how they remember spending their time and what they think their managers will find acceptable.Given a choice between ignorance and numbers I know in advance are wrong, I generally prefer the former. It’s less work for the same result. ——– Technology Industry