Set your team up for success with improved time management on all their development projects.
Time management is a skill that many people feel they can improve upon. When you think about all of the tasks you need to accomplish in a need, the number of meetings you have scheduled, and the side conversations that happen every day — it’s easy to see how this is true.
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It’s been said that only 20% of an average workday is spent on important things, while 80% is spent on things of little to no value. As a manager, seeing this statistic probably makes you cringe. But the fact of the matter is that your employees may not even realize they aren’t managing their time properly.
This is true for employees across the board — but especially for developers who need to perform tedious work and adhere to strict deadlines. Getting distracted or sidetracked could easily create errors in the program code or put a project behind schedule.
As a manager, it’s your responsibility to help your team grow and improve upon their current skill sets. Here’s a quick look at what we’ll discuss around improving your team’s time management skills:
- How using a time clock management system can help improve the punctuality, accountability, and productivity of your team
- How creating a detailed plan and prioritizing tasks will help your team know what tasks to focus on
- How setting realistic deadlines based on business needs can help your team meet goals
With the right guidance, your team can overcome any time management issues. Set them up for success with the right tools to improve their day-to-day work. Image courtesy of Pexels.
Tips for Improving Your Team’s Time Management Skills
Knowing that time management is a skill that many employees identify as an area of improvement, you can help set your team to grow and improve by putting these steps into action.Â
Using a time clock system will help you keep your employees punctual and productive. Image courtesy of Pexels.
Improve Punctuality with a Time Clock System
One of the first places to start when it comes to improving time management of your team is setting a formal attendance schedule. Using the right time clock software will help improve the punctuality and accountability of your employees. Implementing a formal attendance structure will help build a routine for your employees and set a standard for attendance.
If attendance and punctuality aren’t a concern for your team, a time clock software can help improve time management in other ways.
For example, you can schedule a time for your employees to take breaks throughout their day. This will help them take a step back and recharge for 15 or 20 minutes and come back to their desk refreshed.
Planned downtime is especially important for development teams. When you spend hours looking at a computer screen and creating code, taking a short break can be good for productivity and eliminate errors. Scheduled breaks will help your team process and retain information, get a better sense of the whole picture, and become more productive.
A time clock system also offers the ability to pull reports and see exactly when your employees are in the office, on break, or have scheduled time off. This will help you schedule projects and tasks more accurately based on the weekly coverage of your team.
Sitting down with your team as a group will help you plan and prioritize the tasks for the week. This will help everyone stay on top of the tasks that need to be completed and set a clear path for the week. Image courtesy of Pexels.
Create a Plan and Prioritize Tasks
Knowing exactly what employees will be in the office and when will help you prioritize and develop a plan for the week — which is our next tip for improving employee time management.
When you have a plan in place, it’s much easier to accomplish the tasks at hand.
Knowing that a large amount of time needs to be dedicated to research when it comes to developing new software, make sure to build time into your team’s weekly schedule. Create a to-do-list for the whole team and start to divvy up the work and make sure everyone has the right amount of work.
Prioritizing tasks is also an important step in the planning process. Your team members will likely have other tasks show up on their desk throughout the week. They need to know what items should be prioritized and how to manage their time. Providing them with clear direction on what items hold priority that week will help them complete the most important work first.
Setting realistic deadlines for your team is essential to their performance. Make sure you consider their entire workload before adding critical components to their to-do list.
Set Realistic Deadlines Based on Business Needs
In most cases, developers are working to complete projects by a deadline set by another business partner. This means that deadlines are set by someone who may not have experience with the intricate workings of developing new programs and software.
That means as a manager, it’s your job to make sure you set realistic expectations with business partners. But it also means you need to manage your team’s workload with and set deadlines practical deadlines based on their schedules.
If you know two major projects are coming down the pipeline, you should be getting your team started on one, or both, of these projects as soon as possible. This will help keep your team on deadline and meeting the needs of all business partners involved.
The success of your team is dependant on you helping them reach their goals. Improving time management skills will help take your team’s performance to the next level. Image courtesy of Pexels.
Help Your Team Improve Time Management
While these are only a few ways to help improve the time management of your team, it’s a great place to start. Once you’ve implemented the basics, you should expect to see the productivity of your team increase over time. From there, you can continue to improve the team’s time management and start producing even more quality wor.
