Work estimates and logged work

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1

Due dates are useless. Time tracking should be estimated amount of work and logged work against that estimate. Consider the two use cases:

  1. Worker has 12 tasks meticulously due-dated. Suddenly, someone swoops in asking for a bugfix that takes a day to complete. Now, those 12 due dates need to be adjusted.

  2. Worker has 12 tasks meticulously due-dated. Suddenly, one task slated towards the end becomes higher priority. Now, many if not all of the due dates need to be swizzled and rescheduled.

The reality is, the due dates don’t matter at all; all that matters is the worker has 24 days of work scheduled, and that’s what you see on the calendar. The implication is it’s 24 days of work from today; the due date(s) are implied, and the overall due date is the important one. Consider those use cases again:

  1. Worker has 12 tasks time-estimated (24 days total). Suddenly, someone swoops in asking for a bugfix that takes a day to complete. The following day, the worker still has 24 days’ worth of work to do (no adjustments needed).

  2. Worker has 12 tasks time-estimated (24 days total). Suddenly, one task slated towards the end becomes higher priority. The worker logs time into that particular task; time remaining is now 23 days, as it would be otherwise.

2

I cannot agree with you more. The due-date cannot be predicted precisely. Still there are tasks that are more or less automated, and some tasks are of high priority so deadline tracking is vital. Overall, keeping due dates would be helpful for monitoring the performance (in most high-quality digital timers like TMetric, Toggl, Everhour this option is available).