On an autumn day of 2013, our company realized we had no idea how our time was going.
We needed an easy time tracking tool to manage our consultancy business and generally keep our team productive and effective.
So, after some brainstorming and several lines of code, Timeneye was born!
Our little time tracking tool was then launched and the response from our public was enthusiastic.
Fast forward 8 years later, here we are, our team has grown, we serve hundreds of companies all around the world. Every day, more than 800,000 hours are tracked in Timeneye.
And in this numbers, there are also our own hours!
We use Timeneye daily to bring you, well, more Timeneye. This article will share a few insights from our team members and how we manage our time every day.
The importance of time management when building products
Whether you’re building a time tracking tool, or you offer services to clients, you need to be aware of your time management.
For building a product, one would think that if you don’t have to deliver to a client in particular, then you don’t have to keep track of your time.
Well, we found that is wrong.
Knowing how you use your time, and how to be smart about it, is indeed a skill that applies to many work environments. From the biggest companies to the smallest startups. When you build something, it’s easier to get carried away and dedicate too much time to the wrong update, or to put in long hours and damage your focus and well-being.
Tracking your time, instead, will bring you many benefits such as:
- Better organization of the development and production schedule;
- Better use of human effort and resources, especially if you’re a small team;
- More time saved for dealing with emergencies or unexpected issues;
- Sticking to promised production schedule (for your clients or investors).
And if after your product is successful and starts growing, time management is even more important. In order to keep the company under control and use your resources smartly, you have to be diligent about time management.
This is what we do every day: not only do we give 100% to build an amazing product for you, but we have found that Timeneye truly helps us.
In our small team, we manage our work with Timeneye, and other software like Jira and Hubspot. In this article, some team members from our company will show you how they use Timeneye daily, depending on their different roles and responsibilities.
How do we use Timeneye? The team tells you!
Andrea, CEO:
I am the captain of the ship, I spend most of my time discussing and planning strategy with the team (all departments). Our team is effective but small, so I also spend time doing accounting and sales activities.
One of the hardest parts of my job is to delegate effectively in order to free up some time for longer-term vision and strategy, that I need to make hard business choices.
Timeneye helps me juggle both aspects of my work.
When our consultancy branch was still active I used Timeneye mainly to keep track of the time spent on each project to avoid unexpected spikes in costs and to maximize margins.
When using Timeneye for Timeneye, I find it useful to have a vision of the tasks the team is working on and to see how much time is spent on each activity. This is useful to find bottlenecks and take quick action.
Damian, CTO:
Two of the most important things that I need in my work are to let others know what task I have worked on and how much time the team has spent on a given task.
Both of those are easily achievable with the Timeneye browser extension: I’m quickly able to start new timers or entries directly from an issue, and I’m also able to check how much time my team has spent on that particular task.
The total time spent on the task is beneficial when I need to check how we compare against the estimated time for a feature.
Being able to see if anyone from the team has raised any issues, complications, or concerns in the notes of an entry is also an excellent way to see if there is a need to take additional actions (schedule a meeting/add more workforce/delay the due date/increase the estimate)
With Timeneye, I can keep focused on my work but also be mindful of where time goes, and I can communicate clearly and quickly with the rest of the team.
Sara, UX Designer
As a UX Designer, I spend most days designing wireframes in Figma, but sometimes I must interview our users to test a specific feature of our product, or I need to dig my nose into data to detect an emerging pattern.
I enjoy spending my time designing a better experience for our users. They deserve it!
Occasionally I get frustrated because the result of one of my designs does not meet my expectations. In that case, I might spend an extra 15 minutes looking for inspiration online
I use the Timeneye widget in Jira. I find it more intuitive to track time directly on my roadmap because I can visualize each issue. It gives me great satisfaction pushing the status of my tasks from “Idea” to “Done”!
I like both Timeneye’s functions, “Start timer” and “Save entry”, because they both come in handy in different circumstances: I mainly use “Save entry” when I know I have a full day of designing in front of me. Otherwise, I use the “Start timer” option when I am on a specific task but I don’t know how long it would take to achieve it.
Stefania, Marketing Manager:
In my work, I have to juggle so many aspects of marketing: social media, content strategy, SEO, blog articles, market research, reporting to our CEO… I need to have a big picture of our marketing efforts and know what’s the best way to bring Timeney to our users. I jump from one task to another multiple times a day. But I cannot lose or neglect one! At the same time, I find myself needing some “creative” time to craft the best and most engaging content.
So Timeneye helps me keep my schedule under control and make sure I finish all my work in time.
I use timers because I find them more accurate, and I rely heavily on the Timeneye browser widget to track time – I work with too many tabs open, and with the widget, I don’t have to switch to the web app multiple times!
My favorite Timeneye feature is actually the integration with Asana: I use Asana for my content publication workflow. So, I created a Timeneye project called “Blog”, with phases that reflect all the steps that go into writing content. Then I use a Kanban in Asana and track time for all my individual tasks. I also heavily rely on the Outlook Calendar integration a lot to keep track of our meetings, and to time-block my calendar for focused work. Truly time-saving!