Time

Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

I write this article based on the insight of my conversation with my team in our monthly 1-on-1 call. I speak with each one of my team members. This article is a compilation of a whole week's takeaway. You can read more about the reason for it in the article?Restart.

Why can't we bill every hour we spend working for our clients?

It's an essential question for a Product company like ours. We also offer other services like Operations, Custom Development, and Consulting work that we charge them on a project basis. The calculation of the fee is by billing on an hourly basis. The big catch is we must tell them how much it will cost them before the start of the project. I hope you understand that it's fair because clients have a limited budget to run the project.

Clients come to us because they know that we have expertise in Corporate Sustainability benchmarking and assessments. That means we know what they want, and we can quickly deliver work error-free. Matching clients' expectations doesn't happen every time, and we as a team work hard to make sure we provide work on time.?

The long-pending problems we have faced over the years are due to the nature and situation of work:

1. New team members take 3-6 months to learn about the product, and clients need
2. Clients are not clear on requirements due to some unavoidable reasons
3. Unplanned surprise that comes during a workday
4. Lack of few skills and knowledge + external factors within our team
5. Default support expectation by the client to maintain a good relationship with clients.
6. Human error or mistakes we make during our work
7. Ask for additional discounts or bargains from the client-side.?

We have data that shows at least 50% of the work we do cannot or does not fall under the client's billable hours. It's unfair that the client pays for our mistakes, learning curve, internal miscommunication, lack of anticipation, low quality work, repeated errors, missed deadlines, waste etc.

Our culture focuses on learning and leveraging products, intellect, ideas, collaboration and automation.?

Unbillable hours can be upfront negotiated with your lead. Make provision for it from the beginning with atleast 50% of your time. It is an opportunity to understand what makes it unbillable and how can we eliminate it next time. It will teach us the work that we should not take next time, ask a developer to automate it, create systems to remove mistakes and find leverage to improve efficiency.

We get paid more for thinking and less for doing. Which group do you want to be a part of is your choice? Thinkers often tend to do less. They take short term losses for the big day payout. We have designed our self-scoring system that requires the least effort to achieve the maximum results.

I am happy to share solutions or answers in case you disagree.?

How to improve time management, I set out to do a task with a deadline and struggle to meet the deadline?

I will try to share an idea which is proactive time management. It is from our culture subsection "Work". It says, "2-hour checkpoint: every 2 hours in a day, you should have accomplished certain small tasks, make this a habit."

I can better explain this using an example. Let's say you are an operational team member. You have been tasked to set up a 50 question survey in 2 days. Break it down into 2 hours, so it's five questions every 2 hours. Measure every 2 hours and see if you are on track. In case you only complete 20 questions on day 1. You can tell your lead you need half a day more to complete the task. You are removing emotions from work and sharing actionable data.?

This approach helps you by:

1. It will show where you missed the track and was it skills, knowledge, distraction, procrastination or speed.
2. It will allow your leaders to learn from the data
3. It will give you an indication on day one itself
4. You can ask for help well in advance
5. Your communication will be backed by data

What is the product development target of Probench for next year? As you mentioned, the business revenue target is 2X by December 2023?

You can always check the road map here https://probench.document360.io/docs/probench-roadmap-2021-2022

We have decided this year to only focus on Performance + Robustness and User Experience.?

You say we should not build features for which we do not get paid. Why are we working on things like Performance, Cloud Migration and replacing legacy technology like XSLT?

Yes, the thinking is correct that we should only focus on the feature that the client asks for, and we get paid for it. We currently have six full-time developers, which is about 1320 business days per year. Last year we got billed for approximately 300 business days. We also have 300 learning days which leaves us with 700 additional business days.?

We have to be very conscious about how we want to spend them. We decide this based on areas and features that impact all our clients. It has a long term impact as well. It has to be a big picture feature that we can talk to all our clients vs a small nice to have a feature requested by one of the team members.

Factors you can use while making this decision

1) Provide measurable business outcomes. For example, performance improvement will improve the speed of the page by 10 seconds. OR The site will be up 99.99% per year

2) The client sees a significant value in the change. For example, you are moving the file storage to the S3 cloud, OR You can trace every audit log of the user OR Provide a Manager dashboard that displays important information to managers

3) The client has a better user experience. For example, when the user gets locked, they get a message saying, "It seems you have been locked out of the system, Don't worry, we will send you a link to reset your password, and once you set a new password you will be given access to the system." OR In the evidence library, give an option to open the document on the web and take screen grabs to attach it with the question instead of writing page number and adding descriptions.

4) We can increase our speed of development. For example, replacing XSLT could help us achieve 30 story points instead of 15 per sprint. OR Refactor to clean code to add a new question type takes 1/4 of the current time.??

The priority should be always to consider which task will give maximum benefits to the client first and later our team. When you cannot measure the billable hours or potential billable hours for your task find answers to that first before starting your work?

How to deal with a disturbing mind after doing a failed project or not producing expected results? How to not carry the burden of the losses the next day or next week?

This one is sensitive and contains difficult conversations. We do not prepare for this during our workday and consider our estimations. Mental health depends on various factors, and I am not an expert.?

I can share a few techniques I have used throughout my career that have helped me do my work well, try new challenges, take calculated risks, build more value, and do things effortlessly.

1) You are not your work: You have to separate yourself from your work. The biggest problem I have seen is that people take their work personally. They are so attached that they think they are wrong if the work is wrong. It's not true; your work depends on your skills, intelligence, environment, knowledge and talent. All of them can be learnt or practised. When you do a lousy job, you have to learn a better way to do it. It's part of your job that's also called learning on the job.?

2) Will it matter five years from now?: You will be astonished how many things that happen at work to us don't matter in a month, let alone five years from now. If it doesn't matter, then don't give it so much importance. What matters is not the job but you? Are you growing? When you are a leader? Are you leading and not doing the job? When you are a programmer? Are you solving problems brilliantly? When you are a tester? Are you able to think critically and anticipate the bugs in advance? When you are an Operation Person? Are you following the process of the system and working effortlessly?

3) Don't reinvent the wheel: You are not working to prove anything to anyone. You are doing a job to get paid and provide or support your family. That's the only significant role of the job. Why do you want to reinvent the proven formulas and frameworks? You want to use the best tools available within your team and put them to work. So that when something fails, you will look at the tools, processes and systems and find which part is not working as per the team's expectations and fix it. There will always be something wrong with the way you work and not you.?

4) Learn about the Learning Curve: When you learn or try something new, there is a dip? It is travelling in a downward direction before you raise upwards and onwards. You have to make provision for it and set clear expectations with your team members. If you have leadership qualities, you will be vulnerable to communicating with your boss and client that you are currently not capable of doing it. You can show them the plan and share what approach you will take to do it. You have to develop a skill to sit the problem for a longer time and be okay with not achieving anything for some time. Perfection and Improvement will be your enemy here.

5) Write and get it out of you: In mental health, writing in a journal is considered one of the most valuable tools. They say that it gets out of the system once we write anything down. Sometimes you only need that, and you feel light. We may have lost our skill of writing using a pen. I write a blog post, vikramshetty.com. I write all my business frustrations, failures, fight, friction and fuss. I have seen a big advantage of it because my mind stops thinking about the issues, and I have free time to think about possible solutions. If you are a private person, open your email, compose an email with whatever is bothering you, and read it. Delete it. See if that helps you.??

Could you share it with your colleague Today?