Activity Analysis

Introduction

Do I know all of the activities that my team performs to complete a project ? Which of these activities is more difficult ? What are the activities that are consuming more time ? Where should I focus for process improvements ?

These are questions that every software manager should ask, to improve processes, select training modules and plan projects more effectively.

In this article, we present some raw timecard and activity data from a real world system software development project. This particular project was within 20% of its schedule and is a good example of a project under control.

How To Collect Activity Information ?

You can use a simple activity based timecard application. Request your team members to fill out timecards for their activities, to an accuracy of about 2 hours. That's easy enough to do and provides a wealth of information.

Sample Activity Summary

Here is (partial) activity summary generated by our timecard tool for a software development team:

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Activity/Task Code.                      Days.
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 1) A0601 Defect Analysis               55.00
 2) A1101 None (Holiday)                17.50
 3) A0303 Code Review                   12.75
 4) A0306 Code Changes                  10.75
 5) A0301 Programming                    7.75
 6) A0406 Building                       6.75
 7) A0508 Regression Testing             6.50
 8) A0304 Code Merge                     6.50
 9) A0509 Testing (other)                6.25
10) A0602 Defect Resolution              5.50
11) A0206 Design Analysis                5.50
12) A0501 Test Development               4.25
13) A1001 Group Meetings                 3.50

Activity Analysis

The above table shows that a lot of time was spent on analysis. This is common for maintenance projects, where making a small change often requires a lot of analysis.

Sankhya provides solutions for activity based timecard maintenance and report generation. Please visit SANKHYA Consulting or write to sales@sankhya.com for more information.