Time Tracking Software: Painless Estimation Tools Evaluated

Joel Spolsky talks about Painless Software Schedules in his book “JoelOnSoftware“. Accurately estimating how your much time it will take to complete a task is one of the fundamental skills of any professional. Joel’s approach is simple:

• Keep a spreadsheet with Feature / Task / Priority / Original Estimate / Current Estimate columns.
• Track effort in hours, not days/weeks. Tracking in hours forces you to do a straw man analysis of the tasks that are needed upfront. Tracking in longer intervals of time encourage more “rough guessing”.
• Use Excel. Mind you, Joel was the project manager for Excel once upon a time.
• See original article for the other guidelines.

After the break, evaluating different programs.

The reason for having the Original Estimate and Current Estimate columns is to create a feedback loop and improve your estimation skill over time. It can also be helpful to have the estimation history when you are developing an estimate for a similar task.

One useful concept I think he might have left out is doing a best case / worst case original estimate. (See this article for a commentary on best case / worst case as presented in Steve McConnell’s Software Estimation).

He originally wrote that article in March of 2000, so I had to wonder if any of his fans had developed a better software alternative. Here is a loose comparison of five of the contenders:

• Microsoft Excel
  • COST: Free, maybe. Probably already installed on your work computer.
  • MEMORY: 6.2MB on startup.
  • PRO: Flexible, you can do anything with it.
  • CON: Flexible, you can do anything with it and waste a lot of time fiddling instead of working on those tasks you are estimating.
  • In his article Joel gives tips on the key Excel features that are needed to get the system working: pivot tables, WORKDAY

• Safari Software’s Masterlist-XL
• http://www.safarisoftware.com/
  • COST: Free spreadsheet, requires Microsoft Excel.
  • MEMORY: 33.4MB on startup.
  • CON: The version Joel links to in his article is out of date and does not work with modern versions of Excel. Grab the latest version from Safari’s website instead.
  • PRO: Roadmap tutorial.
  • PRO: Very focused on getting you working on the high priority / low time tasks first and the low priority / high time tasks last.
  • CON: Pop-up dialog boxes used for editing instead of editing the spreadsheet directly. Data validation is good, and the fields are bigger/more readable than they would be using the spreadsheet directly, but this slows you down.
  • CON: Has concept of deadlines for when tasks are due. Doesn’t appear to have a mechanism for determining deadlines from the amount of work to be done.
  • PRO: Schedule tasks into specific windows of time on a calendar.
  • CON: Scheduling tasks this way is time consuming. I have to assume that you would only do this 1-2 days in advance.
  • CON: Where is the original estimate / current estimate tracking for giving yourself feedback to improve your estimation skills?
  • PRO: Import internal format (mostly used to upgrade to new versions).
  • CON: Even though you can use Excel to access the raw data, you are most likely going to screw up the application if you try to play around with it.

• Positive-G’s Task Tracker
• http://www.postitive-g.com
  • COST: $25 USD. – MEMORY: 3.1MB on startup. Seems to spawn lots of separate processes as you use it.
  • PRO: This *exactly* the mechanism Joel describes in his book.
  • CON: Pop-up dialog boxes used for editing instead of editing the spreadsheet directly.
  • PRO: Task timers if you don’t want to manually keep track.
  • PRO: You can set how many working hours are in a day. (When was the last time you got 8 effective hours of work in a day without working overtime?)
  • PRO: “Add 1 Hours Work” button to quickly keep track of how long you’ve been working on a task.
  • PRO: Export XML, HTML, MS Project.
  • PRO: Very simple, not going to waste a lot of time learning it.
  • CON: Very simple, no frills.

• AllNetic Working Time Tracker
• http://www.allnetic.com/
  • COST: $30 USD.
  • MEMORY: 7.4MB on startup.
  • PRO: Timers for keeping track of exactly how much time spent on tasks.
  • CON: No concept of original / current estimates, just actual time spend. This tools is more intended for generating billable hour reports.
  • PRO: Import CSV / internal format.
  • PRO: Export HTML / TXT / XML / CSV/ SQL.
  • Generates invoices. This definitely is intended more as a billable hours application.
  • CON: The UI is poorly organized.

 

• Safari Software’s Masterlist Professional
• http://www.safarisoftware.com/
  • COST: $25 USD.
  • MEMORY: 23.5MB at start-up.
  • PRO: Professional look and layout.
  • PRO: Context sensitive help and tutorial.
  • PRO: Has all of the features of Masterlist-XL plus more.
  • PRO: Scheduling can integrate with your Outlook calendar.
  • Doesn’t track current estimate, but can keep track of original estimate (Time Needed) and how long it took (Time Spent) so feedback is possible.
  • Timer support.
  • PRO: It has an algorithm for suggesting the order in which tasks should be done, and auto-scheduling.
  • PRO: Is a tool for a productivity enhancing methodology.
  • PRO: Prioritizer wizard for assigning finely grained priority.
  • PRO: Data can be edited in a spreadsheet view.
  • PRO: Export to Excel.
  • CON: The program has enough smarts in it that there will be some ramp up time while you get used to it.
  • CON: It wasn’t readily evident if you could use the data for project planning. It seems more focused on enhancing productivity. Not a bad thing.

• AbstractSpoon’s ToDo List
• http://www.codeproject.com/tools/todolist2.asp
  • COST: Free, open source.
  • MEMORY: 7MB at start-up.
  • PRO: ISO data format support! (I’m a freak who doesn’t understand why YYYY/MM/DD isn’t the defacto every where since it is unambiguous and easily sortable).
  • PRO: Plug-in architecture. Existing plug-ins include: encrypt/decrypt, iCal Exporter, RTF comments, custom spellcheck, Gannt Project Export.
  • PRO: 3rd-party tool support.
  • PRO: Multiple user support with XML data files that can be merged with source control software.
  • PRO: Tree based task lists with functions for breaking existing tasks into lists of subtasks. The branches of the tree roll up into their parents in terms of tracking data.
  • PRO: Timers.
  • PRO: Keeps track of your original estimate and time spent.
  • PRO: Smart set of tracking fields. Priority, Risk, % Complete, Start Date, Due Date, Completion Date, user defined status.
  • PRO: Completely configurable UI.
  • PRO: Export HTML, TXT, CSV.
  • PRO: Spellchecker.
  • CON: Overwhelming amount of configurable options (you can even reconfigure all of the keyboard shortcuts!)
  • CON: For programmers, by programmers. It is very well done but suffers from clutter. This comes from being so highly configurable.
  • CON: I’m surprised there aren’t user-defined fields.
  • It doesn’t directly have metrics for comparing original estimate and time spent, but it would be easy to whip up a plug-in to support that.

UPDATE 2006/09/07

• willCode4Beer does it very simply with an XML file and an XSL transformation
• http://willcode4beer.com/design.jsp?set=sched
  • PRO: How much simpler can you get?
  • CON: How much simpler can you get? :)
  • PRO: It was cool that he found this page and left a comment on it.
  • PRO: Because it’s bare-bones you’ll spend time on doing work and not fiddling around with scheduling.

Overall:

• First choice: ToDo List.
• Second choice: Using homegrown Excel application. This will give you a lot of flexibility, but it will be more time consuming.
  • Or use the XML/XSL approach.
• Third choice: Masterlist Professional. I have a feeling it can be a very powerful tool, but do you have time to ramp up?
• Fourth choice: Task List. Use Painless Software Schedules methodology with a slightly nicer interface than a raw Excel spreadsheet. If you have to do anything beyond scheduling one person you’re screwed.

Not recommended:

• Working Time Tracker
• Masterlist XL (just buy Masterlist Professional if that’s the format you are comfortable with).

Please leave comments with any other suggestions (that’s how I found out about ToDo List — thank you Jay Kint).

---

Related Posts:

• Other posts on Estimating/Estimation
  • Getting to Deadline – Programmer Productivity Tips At Work (Getting to Done)
  • List of Web-based (Web 2.0) Time Tracking Applications