Overtime Work

[BTOjohn]

Hi All,

Before I start, I want to aknowledge that the culture I describe here is not
one of a commercial organisation, rather it is closer to an academic
environment.

I've got an issue with overtime. Our organisation does not pay overtime, and
has had a history of staff recording only 1day of work in any one day. Since
many dedicated staff work very long hours, this did not represent the effort
being applied. We have changed this now, so people record the hours that they
do, which of course helps us attain more accuracy in accounts, aids in future
tenders etc etc. However, we have one or two people who have rightly pointed
out that this will heavily skew the time budgets, making it difficult to
guage how many funded days are left. eg historically, if 10 days of funding
were received, then the work would get done in 10 days, but only because
staff work on average, and by choice, an extra hour per day.

As a transitionary measure, I am hoping to somehow record for each day, if
it is more than 7.4hours, then it equals 7.4hours, and if it is less than
7.4hours, then it equals itself. These figures added up would give a fairer
comparison to baseline work. (one day of work is 7.4h)

I hope I have made myself clear, and I hope that someone out there can help!

Thanks in advance,

John

 

[Steve House]

First of all, define a "funded day" and how it translates into workload.
Does 10 days of funding cover 80 man-hours of work regardless of when the
work is performed or does it mean something else? Suppose you had 10 funded
days for a task and the resource worked 10 hours a day instead of 8 - would
funding run out in 8 days or would it still be 10?

 

[BTOjohn]

Thanks for getting back to me on this. In the vast majority of cases one
funded day refers to our 7.4hour working day. Thus if we won a contract for
10 days, this would be input as 10days or 74hours of time. We would expect to
get this work done in 74 hours. The issue, however, is for example with
fieldworkers, for whom a day is simply as long as that day of fieldwork takes
them.

In this case, we have 10days of funded fieldwork ie 74 hours. We are asking
those staff to enter all of the hours that they actually work, which might be
9 hours every day. For a project manager, this makes life impossible, because
after eight days of working, it appears that all ten days of work have been
used.

I hope this explains my problem a bit better?

I look to identify the hours input in any one day. If the hours are more
than 7.4, then the algorythm would define it as 7.4 hours only, but if it is
less than 7.4 hours, it would not be changed. By adding up all of these
hours, a figure would be produced, which could be comparable to the baseline.

Thanks in advance.

First of all, define a "funded day" and how it translates into workload.
Does 10 days of funding cover 80 man-hours of work regardless of when the
work is performed or does it mean something else? Suppose you had 10 funded
days for a task and the resource worked 10 hours a day instead of 8 - would
funding run out in 8 days or would it still be 10?


--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi All,

Before I start, I want to aknowledge that the culture I describe here is
not
one of a commercial organisation, rather it is closer to an academic
environment.

I've got an issue with overtime. Our organisation does not pay overtime,
and
has had a history of staff recording only 1day of work in any one day.
Since
many dedicated staff work very long hours, this did not represent the
effort
being applied. We have changed this now, so people record the hours that
they
do, which of course helps us attain more accuracy in accounts, aids in
future
tenders etc etc. However, we have one or two people who have rightly
pointed
out that this will heavily skew the time budgets, making it difficult to
guage how many funded days are left. eg historically, if 10 days of
funding
were received, then the work would get done in 10 days, but only because
staff work on average, and by choice, an extra hour per day.

As a transitionary measure, I am hoping to somehow record for each day, if
it is more than 7.4hours, then it equals 7.4hours, and if it is less than
7.4hours, then it equals itself. These figures added up would give a
fairer
comparison to baseline work. (one day of work is 7.4h)

I hope I have made myself clear, and I hope that someone out there can
help!

Thanks in advance,

John

 

[Steve House]

I don't think such an algorithm will work for you. What if they work LESS
than 7.4 hours some day? They still will have to do 74 hours of work to
finish the contracted for deliverable.

What is wrong with showing after 8 days you have done all the work that was
originally expected to take 10 but still have some work left to do? Project
is not intended to be used to monitor the disbursement of revenues from a
contract. So after 10 days of work you've consumed 90 hours of work? The
fact that your client only paid for 74 hours is irrelevant from a project
management viewpoint. From a business management viewpoint it's another
story - when revenues are lower than costs you're in the doo-doo. But
regardless of whether you pay overtime to your fieldworkers or not, you do
pay for those hours somehow, they represent a real cost to you. What's
important from a project management standpoint is the ability to figure out
is how long it will take to deliver 100 fids or whatever the project is. In
fact, you really NEED to know that it really took 90 man-hours instead of 74
to do the work the client required so that NEXT time you won't underbid the
job and lose your shirt. You said it makes life impossible for the PM but I
disagree - the PM is not responsible for disbursing the funds to the
project, he's responsible for estimating and scheduling the work and setting
the budget by estimating the internal costs of doing the work, then
monitoring progress to insure you finish on-time and within budget. Let the
accounting department worry about funding and the contracts.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Thanks for getting back to me on this. In the vast majority of cases one
funded day refers to our 7.4hour working day. Thus if we won a contract
for
10 days, this would be input as 10days or 74hours of time. We would expect
to
get this work done in 74 hours. The issue, however, is for example with
fieldworkers, for whom a day is simply as long as that day of fieldwork
takes
them.

In this case, we have 10days of funded fieldwork ie 74 hours. We are
asking
those staff to enter all of the hours that they actually work, which might
be
9 hours every day. For a project manager, this makes life impossible,
because
after eight days of working, it appears that all ten days of work have
been
used.

I hope this explains my problem a bit better?

I look to identify the hours input in any one day. If the hours are more
than 7.4, then the algorythm would define it as 7.4 hours only, but if it
is
less than 7.4 hours, it would not be changed. By adding up all of these
hours, a figure would be produced, which could be comparable to the
baseline.

Thanks in advance.

First of all, define a "funded day" and how it translates into workload.
Does 10 days of funding cover 80 man-hours of work regardless of when the
work is performed or does it mean something else? Suppose you had 10
funded
days for a task and the resource worked 10 hours a day instead of 8 -
would
funding run out in 8 days or would it still be 10?


--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi All,

Before I start, I want to aknowledge that the culture I describe here
is
not
one of a commercial organisation, rather it is closer to an academic
environment.

I've got an issue with overtime. Our organisation does not pay
overtime,
and
has had a history of staff recording only 1day of work in any one day.
Since
many dedicated staff work very long hours, this did not represent the
effort
being applied. We have changed this now, so people record the hours
that
they
do, which of course helps us attain more accuracy in accounts, aids in
future
tenders etc etc. However, we have one or two people who have rightly
pointed
out that this will heavily skew the time budgets, making it difficult
to
guage how many funded days are left. eg historically, if 10 days of
funding
were received, then the work would get done in 10 days, but only
because
staff work on average, and by choice, an extra hour per day.

As a transitionary measure, I am hoping to somehow record for each day,
if
it is more than 7.4hours, then it equals 7.4hours, and if it is less
than
7.4hours, then it equals itself. These figures added up would give a
fairer
comparison to baseline work. (one day of work is 7.4h)

I hope I have made myself clear, and I hope that someone out there can
help!

Thanks in advance,

John

 

[BTOjohn]

Hi Steve,

Sorry its taken me so long to respond, I've not been around. Thank you for
persevering with me! In principle, I agree with you completely, and this is
something that I have been trying to emphasise again and again. It took some
work to convince people that we have to record all of the hours we actually
do, rather than just enternig 1d, but this is essentially the fall out from
that. There are those who have argued convincingly enough that I have been
asked to come up with a "solution".

It is a specific situation where one person is working full time on one
project. In this case his cost in the accounts is the same if he works 7.4 or
20 hours. However, given a baseline of 10d=74h, if that person is working
more than 7.4h/d, then the remaining days decreases more rapidly. Anyway,
I'm sure you understand this situation.

I guess I was hoping that you might be able to tell me wether the algorythm
I described in my first post is even possible. ie when work in any day is
more than 7.4h, it would be equated to exactly 7.4h, but if it is less than
7.4h, then it would not be altered. I am a novice programmer, and am not
entirely sure where to begin, even if this were possible.

Thanks again in advance,

John

I don't think such an algorithm will work for you. What if they work LESS
than 7.4 hours some day? They still will have to do 74 hours of work to
finish the contracted for deliverable.

What is wrong with showing after 8 days you have done all the work that was
originally expected to take 10 but still have some work left to do? Project
is not intended to be used to monitor the disbursement of revenues from a
contract. So after 10 days of work you've consumed 90 hours of work? The
fact that your client only paid for 74 hours is irrelevant from a project
management viewpoint. From a business management viewpoint it's another
story - when revenues are lower than costs you're in the doo-doo. But
regardless of whether you pay overtime to your fieldworkers or not, you do
pay for those hours somehow, they represent a real cost to you. What's
important from a project management standpoint is the ability to figure out
is how long it will take to deliver 100 fids or whatever the project is. In
fact, you really NEED to know that it really took 90 man-hours instead of 74
to do the work the client required so that NEXT time you won't underbid the
job and lose your shirt. You said it makes life impossible for the PM but I
disagree - the PM is not responsible for disbursing the funds to the
project, he's responsible for estimating and scheduling the work and setting
the budget by estimating the internal costs of doing the work, then
monitoring progress to insure you finish on-time and within budget. Let the
accounting department worry about funding and the contracts.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Thanks for getting back to me on this. In the vast majority of cases one
funded day refers to our 7.4hour working day. Thus if we won a contract
for
10 days, this would be input as 10days or 74hours of time. We would expect
to
get this work done in 74 hours. The issue, however, is for example with
fieldworkers, for whom a day is simply as long as that day of fieldwork
takes
them.

In this case, we have 10days of funded fieldwork ie 74 hours. We are
asking
those staff to enter all of the hours that they actually work, which might
be
9 hours every day. For a project manager, this makes life impossible,
because
after eight days of working, it appears that all ten days of work have
been
used.

I hope this explains my problem a bit better?

I look to identify the hours input in any one day. If the hours are more
than 7.4, then the algorythm would define it as 7.4 hours only, but if it
is
less than 7.4 hours, it would not be changed. By adding up all of these
hours, a figure would be produced, which could be comparable to the
baseline.

Thanks in advance.

First of all, define a "funded day" and how it translates into workload.
Does 10 days of funding cover 80 man-hours of work regardless of when the
work is performed or does it mean something else? Suppose you had 10
funded
days for a task and the resource worked 10 hours a day instead of 8 -
would
funding run out in 8 days or would it still be 10?


--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs



Hi All,

Before I start, I want to aknowledge that the culture I describe here
is
not
one of a commercial organisation, rather it is closer to an academic
environment.

I've got an issue with overtime. Our organisation does not pay
overtime,
and
has had a history of staff recording only 1day of work in any one day.
Since
many dedicated staff work very long hours, this did not represent the
effort
being applied. We have changed this now, so people record the hours
that
they
do, which of course helps us attain more accuracy in accounts, aids in
future
tenders etc etc. However, we have one or two people who have rightly
pointed
out that this will heavily skew the time budgets, making it difficult
to
guage how many funded days are left. eg historically, if 10 days of
funding
were received, then the work would get done in 10 days, but only
because
staff work on average, and by choice, an extra hour per day.

As a transitionary measure, I am hoping to somehow record for each day,
if
it is more than 7.4hours, then it equals 7.4hours, and if it is less
than
7.4hours, then it equals itself. These figures added up would give a
fairer
comparison to baseline work. (one day of work is 7.4h)

I hope I have made myself clear, and I hope that someone out there can
help!

Thanks in advance,

John

 

[BTOjohn]

Sorry, I should add to that. I am not looking to alter any data, but simply
to create another field using existing data, which can then be displayed in
MSP.

I don't think such an algorithm will work for you. What if they work LESS
than 7.4 hours some day? They still will have to do 74 hours of work to
finish the contracted for deliverable.

What is wrong with showing after 8 days you have done all the work that was
originally expected to take 10 but still have some work left to do? Project
is not intended to be used to monitor the disbursement of revenues from a
contract. So after 10 days of work you've consumed 90 hours of work? The
fact that your client only paid for 74 hours is irrelevant from a project
management viewpoint. From a business management viewpoint it's another
story - when revenues are lower than costs you're in the doo-doo. But
regardless of whether you pay overtime to your fieldworkers or not, you do
pay for those hours somehow, they represent a real cost to you. What's
important from a project management standpoint is the ability to figure out
is how long it will take to deliver 100 fids or whatever the project is. In
fact, you really NEED to know that it really took 90 man-hours instead of 74
to do the work the client required so that NEXT time you won't underbid the
job and lose your shirt. You said it makes life impossible for the PM but I
disagree - the PM is not responsible for disbursing the funds to the
project, he's responsible for estimating and scheduling the work and setting
the budget by estimating the internal costs of doing the work, then
monitoring progress to insure you finish on-time and within budget. Let the
accounting department worry about funding and the contracts.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Thanks for getting back to me on this. In the vast majority of cases one
funded day refers to our 7.4hour working day. Thus if we won a contract
for
10 days, this would be input as 10days or 74hours of time. We would expect
to
get this work done in 74 hours. The issue, however, is for example with
fieldworkers, for whom a day is simply as long as that day of fieldwork
takes
them.

In this case, we have 10days of funded fieldwork ie 74 hours. We are
asking
those staff to enter all of the hours that they actually work, which might
be
9 hours every day. For a project manager, this makes life impossible,
because
after eight days of working, it appears that all ten days of work have
been
used.

I hope this explains my problem a bit better?

I look to identify the hours input in any one day. If the hours are more
than 7.4, then the algorythm would define it as 7.4 hours only, but if it
is
less than 7.4 hours, it would not be changed. By adding up all of these
hours, a figure would be produced, which could be comparable to the
baseline.

Thanks in advance.

First of all, define a "funded day" and how it translates into workload.
Does 10 days of funding cover 80 man-hours of work regardless of when the
work is performed or does it mean something else? Suppose you had 10
funded
days for a task and the resource worked 10 hours a day instead of 8 -
would
funding run out in 8 days or would it still be 10?


--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs



Hi All,

Before I start, I want to aknowledge that the culture I describe here
is
not
one of a commercial organisation, rather it is closer to an academic
environment.

I've got an issue with overtime. Our organisation does not pay
overtime,
and
has had a history of staff recording only 1day of work in any one day.
Since
many dedicated staff work very long hours, this did not represent the
effort
being applied. We have changed this now, so people record the hours
that
they
do, which of course helps us attain more accuracy in accounts, aids in
future
tenders etc etc. However, we have one or two people who have rightly
pointed
out that this will heavily skew the time budgets, making it difficult
to
guage how many funded days are left. eg historically, if 10 days of
funding
were received, then the work would get done in 10 days, but only
because
staff work on average, and by choice, an extra hour per day.

As a transitionary measure, I am hoping to somehow record for each day,
if
it is more than 7.4hours, then it equals 7.4hours, and if it is less
than
7.4hours, then it equals itself. These figures added up would give a
fairer
comparison to baseline work. (one day of work is 7.4h)

I hope I have made myself clear, and I hope that someone out there can
help!

Thanks in advance,

John

 

[Steve House]

What you are describing in a nutshell is why I'm so adamant that Project
should not be used for accounting purposes. IMHO, accountants tend to live
in some shadow Wonderland behind the looking glass where hatters host tea
parties with bunnies and doormice and 2 plus 2 becomes whatever you'd like
it to be <grin>. The work that a task requires is a measure of the physical
energy required to produce the necessary output - for most tasks it is a
precisely measurable quantity very much like measuring the amount of
gasoline that your car will need for a journey of 500 miles. Does the
QUANTITY of gasoline required to make that trip vary as the price of
gasoline varies or even as the amount of money you have to spend on it
varies? The duration that a task requires is the length of time over which
that energy is expended, running from the time work begins until the
deliverable is completed, analogous to the time required to make your trip
(and the speed you drive is analogous to the resource assignment
percentage). Both of these are observable physical measures and should
never be "fudged" with a calculation that says that regardless of the actual
amount of work done in a day treat it as if it was 7.4 hours because that's
what our funding is based on. Your second paragraph is the crux of the
issue - you are having a problem with the fact that if he has to do 74 hours
of work to complete the deliverable, based on an initial estimate of 10 days
@ 7.4 hours per day, and he when he actually does the job he works more the
7.4 hours a day, he will finish the deliverable in fewer days than it was
originally estimated. To me this is an accurate description of physical
reality so no, I must confess I DON'T understand why that is a problem
<grin>. Regardless of the basis for the funding, it will take him how ever
many days it takes to complete the work as it takes him to do 74 man-hours
of labour, regardless of whether he does it in 5 days @ 15h/day, 10 days @
7.4h/day, or 74 days @ 1h/day. From a Project Management standpoint, what
is important is tracking how much he has done versus how much he is required
to do and whether the rate at which it is getting done will allow it to
complete by the agreed upon deadline.

You mentioned fieldworkers workdays in an earlier post, with you having a a
contract for them to do 10days work at 7.4 hours per day. Just to make it
tangible, lets assume they are doing interviews and so let me ask, does this
mean that they will work for 10 days, no more and no less, regardless of the
number of hours they work in a day as long as it's at least 7.4 and will do
how ever many interviews they get done in that 10 day period, or does it
mean they need to do 500 interviews, we've estimated it will take them 10
days at 7.4 hours per day and have submitted a fixed price bid based on
that, but they'll finish when they have done 500 interviews regardless of
the time and work it actually requires, whether it be 6 days or 15 days to
do all 500?
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi Steve,

Sorry its taken me so long to respond, I've not been around. Thank you for
persevering with me! In principle, I agree with you completely, and this
is
something that I have been trying to emphasise again and again. It took
some
work to convince people that we have to record all of the hours we
actually
do, rather than just enternig 1d, but this is essentially the fall out
from
that. There are those who have argued convincingly enough that I have been
asked to come up with a "solution".

It is a specific situation where one person is working full time on one
project. In this case his cost in the accounts is the same if he works 7.4
or
20 hours. However, given a baseline of 10d=74h, if that person is working
more than 7.4h/d, then the remaining days decreases more rapidly. Anyway,
I'm sure you understand this situation.

I guess I was hoping that you might be able to tell me wether the
algorythm
I described in my first post is even possible. ie when work in any day is
more than 7.4h, it would be equated to exactly 7.4h, but if it is less
than
7.4h, then it would not be altered. I am a novice programmer, and am not
entirely sure where to begin, even if this were possible.

Thanks again in advance,

John

I don't think such an algorithm will work for you. What if they work
LESS
than 7.4 hours some day? They still will have to do 74 hours of work to
finish the contracted for deliverable.

What is wrong with showing after 8 days you have done all the work that
was
originally expected to take 10 but still have some work left to do?
Project
is not intended to be used to monitor the disbursement of revenues from a
contract. So after 10 days of work you've consumed 90 hours of work?
The
fact that your client only paid for 74 hours is irrelevant from a project
management viewpoint. From a business management viewpoint it's another
story - when revenues are lower than costs you're in the doo-doo. But
regardless of whether you pay overtime to your fieldworkers or not, you
do
pay for those hours somehow, they represent a real cost to you. What's
important from a project management standpoint is the ability to figure
out
is how long it will take to deliver 100 fids or whatever the project is.
In
fact, you really NEED to know that it really took 90 man-hours instead of
74
to do the work the client required so that NEXT time you won't underbid
the
job and lose your shirt. You said it makes life impossible for the PM
but I
disagree - the PM is not responsible for disbursing the funds to the
project, he's responsible for estimating and scheduling the work and
setting
the budget by estimating the internal costs of doing the work, then
monitoring progress to insure you finish on-time and within budget. Let
the
accounting department worry about funding and the contracts.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Thanks for getting back to me on this. In the vast majority of cases
one
funded day refers to our 7.4hour working day. Thus if we won a contract
for
10 days, this would be input as 10days or 74hours of time. We would
expect
to
get this work done in 74 hours. The issue, however, is for example with
fieldworkers, for whom a day is simply as long as that day of fieldwork
takes
them.

In this case, we have 10days of funded fieldwork ie 74 hours. We are
asking
those staff to enter all of the hours that they actually work, which
might
be
9 hours every day. For a project manager, this makes life impossible,
because
after eight days of working, it appears that all ten days of work have
been
used.

I hope this explains my problem a bit better?

I look to identify the hours input in any one day. If the hours are
more
than 7.4, then the algorythm would define it as 7.4 hours only, but if
it
is
less than 7.4 hours, it would not be changed. By adding up all of these
hours, a figure would be produced, which could be comparable to the
baseline.

Thanks in advance.


:


First of all, define a "funded day" and how it translates into
workload.
Does 10 days of funding cover 80 man-hours of work regardless of when
the
work is performed or does it mean something else? Suppose you had 10
funded
days for a task and the resource worked 10 hours a day instead of 8 -
would
funding run out in 8 days or would it still be 10?


--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs



Hi All,

Before I start, I want to aknowledge that the culture I describe
here
is
not
one of a commercial organisation, rather it is closer to an academic
environment.

I've got an issue with overtime. Our organisation does not pay
overtime,
and
has had a history of staff recording only 1day of work in any one
day.
Since
many dedicated staff work very long hours, this did not represent
the
effort
being applied. We have changed this now, so people record the hours
that
they
do, which of course helps us attain more accuracy in accounts, aids
in
future
tenders etc etc. However, we have one or two people who have rightly
pointed
out that this will heavily skew the time budgets, making it
difficult
to
guage how many funded days are left. eg historically, if 10 days of
funding
were received, then the work would get done in 10 days, but only
because
staff work on average, and by choice, an extra hour per day.

As a transitionary measure, I am hoping to somehow record for each
day,
if
it is more than 7.4hours, then it equals 7.4hours, and if it is less
than
7.4hours, then it equals itself. These figures added up would give a
fairer
comparison to baseline work. (one day of work is 7.4h)

I hope I have made myself clear, and I hope that someone out there
can
help!

Thanks in advance,

John