Effective Time Management

Target audience: Beginner

Estimated reading time: 3'

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Table of contents

Principle

Effective meetings

Urgent vs. important tasks

Time wasters

References

Principle

Each team member to contribute to the extend of his/her capability during the work week. 

The two key elements of an effective time management are:

• Flexibility: Team members should be able to work multiple tasks, change roles and get around bottlenecks. 
• Availability:  Team members should support other team members, constantly evaluate the efficient usage of their time and be accessible outside business hours if necessary. 

Effective meetings

There are some basic no "non-sense" rules to make sure that meetings are conducted efficiently.

• Each meeting should have a clear theme and agenda, emailed to all attendees 48 hours prior the schedule day 
• Meeting should be restricted to one hour and start with a recap of pending action items for previous sessions and listing the issues on the agenda. 
• The team should spend no more than 10' on each issue. In case a consensus is not reached, someone  should be assigned to task to research, investigate and propose a solution for the next meeting. 
• It is highly recommended to deal with critical or controversial issues at the beginning of the meeting. 
• Minutes of the meeting, including action items, deliverable and milestones should be posted within 24 hours.  

Urgent vs. important tasks  

The most productive tasks are (in decreasing orders)
     1. Important & Non urgent
     2. Important &Urgent
     3. Non important & Urgent
     4. Non important & Non urgent

The following table lists some activities as classified by their importance and urgency.

.	Urgent	Not Urgent
Important	Escalations Hiring Resolving bottlenecks Assigning Defects Solving Escalations	Project Planning Training Technical investigation    Design Documentation
Unimportant	Time-sensitive interruptions     Responding emails Texting Phone Calls Unscheduled meetings	Browsing web Social visits

The role of project manager is to
- Protect engineers from urgency & interruptions
- Define/communicate the important tasks for the week

Time wasters   

Unscheduled interruptions are far more distracting than people. Beyond the actual time spent to address the interruption, it takes on average 15 minutes to get back to the activity in progress.

The following table lists some examples of interruptions or time wasters and possible solutions.

Wasters	Solutions
Lack of clear priorities	Better project management
Unproductive meetings	Meetings with goal,agenda,minutes
Productivity bottlenecks	Flexible organization in terms of skills,schedule
Unnecessary interruptions	Manager to control interruptions
Process inefficiencies	Process automation and productivity tools
Lack of accountability	Quantitative metrics (K.P.I.) functionality,quality,schedule

References

•  www.effective-time-management-strategies.com
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People  -  S. Covey - Rosetta Books 1989