I would like to share some interesting about JIRA as far as its timesheet functionalities goes. For those who are about to consider such platform, or could face the need to use it in the months to come, here is a few thoughts I would like to share.

Many corporations are used to timesheet data gathering from specific environments, such as Word file, Web applications, Excel, or simply by email for example. JIRA, additionally to provide a great environment for processing project tasks, also includes the support, thru plug-ins, of timesheet related data gathering. I have been in the context to start using that, as a replacement of previous implementation, and it does an incredible job. As is the case when entering time log with other environments, when working with a JIRA task, as we work on it or once completed, we can simply log the time as well as is. Summarizing, adding more time, moving from weeks to weeks, the collaboration with other resources to view their timesheet and so on, are providing accurate and powerful metrics as we go on. As is the case for any change in using technology tools, there is also a learning curve. But, that part was actually not such a big deal.

In overall, it is through the Web, so if you manipulate the data a lot, you will wait for refresh of pages and things like that. But, for as long as this does not go over the time which was needed when using previous environments to achieve the same set of tasks, at the end of the week, if we achieve the same set of weekly tasks within the same timeframe, it would then become an interesting tool to consider.

Having said that, some would use JIRA for their project management sole tool. I think we can all agree that this is not Microsoft Project. So, basically, I use a mix and match of both tools presently. As a project manager, you collect the time in real time, don't have to run after the resources to get their timesheets, and everyone is happy. Then, I simply adjust as needed Microsoft Project with resource percentage assigned on projects/tasks, dependencies, conflicts, and things like that, and I get the rest of the management data I need.

Now, if I can only stop forgeting to enter "h" when I log time, I would be ok. lol