How do you overcome time tracking challenges for an agency or consultants that adhere to agile/scrum methodologies?

alfredo_2

I'm looking for feedback on a concept I'm working on to help tackle some of the challenges I run into and am curious to know how you guys handle it?

• Team members don't submit timesheets on time
• Team members don't enter time because they are so focused on completing work
• Team members have trouble remembering/providing good details for time entries
• Invoices don't have enough detail

If this sounds familiar 

• What software or apps do you use for daily standups?
• What software or apps do you use for time tracking /invoicing?

I appreciate the feedback. I'm trying to help a dev team focus as much as they can on their work, while making sure a client we are doing work for can see the correct amount of detail in the invoices we are sending over.

We are currently using the assembla standup tool + google docs + harvest (time tracking / invoicing)

Couple of key points we use that I think might answer some of your questions:

Everyone is taught from the jump to block the last thirty minutes on their calendar every day for admin/cleanup IE entering billable time, catch-up with the team standup style which helps everyone remember what specifically they did work on that day, share any immediate concerns that need resolution and also foreseeable issues coming down the pike, etc. If you wind up having to continue working after hours, that's fine. But come 4:30, your calendar is blocked out for clean-up of the day since 9AM. Leads check every morning to make sure time was entered. And if not, you have a meeting invite in your inbox before you even sit down at your desk because you got some 'splaining to do. Helps resolve that point you made about team members not entering time because they're so involved in completing their current thing.

Mavenlink is a good time keeping tool that allows for breakdown of projects into bite size pieces like sprints, UAT, go live, etc. that help define details on an invoice and mark non-billable time like trainings or internal meetings because you need to keep track of that too. You don't mention it, but make sure your firm is also finding the right balance in terms of time breakdown. IE law firms go as inane as six minute intervals, others round to half hour chunks and some use what I think is the sweet-spot of 15min intervals.