Time tracking is a powerful tool. It can help professionals of all kinds perform better—improving their work. But, trackers are particularly popular among developers, who can benefit quite a lot from high-quality apps.
In this article, we’ll explore how time tracking enhances productivity for developers. Specifically, we’ll cover three key ways trackers benefit development teams. Additionally, we’ll also look at how you can use time tracking apps effectively in your own team of programmers.
Understanding the Importance of Productivity—in Development and Beyond
Productivity for developers isn’t just about working faster. In addition to meeting deadlines, your staff will also be able to create higher-quality code if they’re productive. This will have obvious benefits—as your products will be able to stand out from the competition. Completing projects faster, meanwhile, will let your team deliver more of them.
Time tracking, along with other solutions for employee monitoring, can play a big role in this regard. One of the key ways they increase productivity is by helping your developers see where they spend time. They can then focus more on their work and cut out unproductive habits and, more importantly—distractions.
How Time Tracking Enhances Developer Productivity
Time tracking enhances developer productivity in a variety of ways. While there are countless of these to explore, this guide will cover three important ones:
- Identifying distractions and eliminating them
- Supporting deep focus and sessions of focused working
- Setting ambitious goals that are also achievable and realistic
Let’s explore these in-depth, starting with the first one.
Identifying and Eliminating Distractions
Distractions can be a big problem for all professionals. Time tracking can show you and your developers where they lose time. It can even reveal things like too much time spent on meetings or emails. These are typically productive, but, having too many of them will turn them into time-wasters instead.
After spotting these distractions, you can eliminate them. This will help your team maintain their focus for longer periods of time—which is conveniently our next point of discussion.
Support Focused Working Sessions
Focused work is essential for coding. Time tracking can help your employees structure these work sessions. Developers can block off time for deep work—where they can stay in the zone and perform their best.
You can use a variety of time management techniques for this purpose. You may even combine it with task management systems to identify daunting assignments and cross them off your staff’s to-do lists. Managing your team’s tasks in a time tracker will also help you in our next point—setting ambitious yet achievable goals.
Setting Achievable—yet Ambitious Goals
Setting the right goals is key to achieving and maintaining growth for your business. By seeing how long different types of projects and tasks take, you can set realistic goals to avoid overworking your staff. If you’re not aware, overworking has lots of negative side effects—so it’s important to avoid it.
Besides setting goals for your firm as a whole, you can also set targets for your staff. You’ll then be able to identify your best employees to reward them proportionally to their efforts.
Closing Thoughts: Using Time Tracking Apps Effectively in a Development Team
To get the most from time tracking apps, you need to set them up correctly. You must also get the best tracker for your team, which should integrate into your workflows well and help your team succeed—without getting in the way.
Using high-quality, feature-rich software will help ensure your company’s success. While we only discussed three key points, such trackers can help enhance productivity in endless ways. Improved productivity will then help your business speed up its growth—by offering higher-quality products and services.