Why Atlassian experts Addteq called Timesheets a necessary product for teams working in Jira

Background

Addteq specializes in software configuration, build automation, and release management, as well as developing products that automate the software configuration management process from conceptualization to build and deployment.

As the largest Atlassian experts in the NYC region, they are involved with a lot of large-scale implementations and diverse work as they help with with the customization, configuration, and administration of the Atlassian toolchain.

Addteq offers a curated Atlassian experience with its managed hosting platform, Codefactori and have released several add-ons in the Atlassian Marketplace, such as Excellentable, Graphviz, and MscGen.

Having been introduced to Timesheets by Tempo in 2011 when they first implemented our time tracking and reporting solution throughout their organization, they’ve been using our time tracking and reporting tool ever since.

We spoke with Brendan Kaplan, senior marketing specialist at Addteq, to hear more about the challenges they faced before implementing Tempo company-wide and how Timesheets has helped the business.

Challenges

Before implementing Timesheets, Addteq was previously using their own timesheet collection software named Iris. However, this made it difficult and cumbersome for them to process, and served as an impediment to their sprint planning.  

They were not able to adequately track time in real-time, which made their planning and development process difficult. This is where Tempo came in to help them keep track of time properly and sufficiently.

“It became apparent almost immediately that Tempo was a great, and in fact a necessary product. As such we implemented Tempo on our Jira instance in October of 2011,” Kaplan says, “We've been able to implement evidence based planning using Timesheet’s metrics. By tracking projects individually, and as parts of departments, we are able to create an honest assessment of where our time goes, and estimate how much new initiatives will cost.”

Results

In the fast paced world of software technology, it’s crucial to meet challenges head on with scalable solutions. Addteq found that with Timesheets.

Now, their sprints are moving at a much faster pace and they don’t have to do any more clunky manual data entry when understanding how long their projects took.

How does it work? Now, Addteq require employees to log time with Timesheets when transitioning tasks. This enables all the tracking and estimation capabilities.

The dev teams track their time and collaboration by the minute, while marketing works according to the hour, and sales according to the day. Their development teams also use the plan time feature, since Addteq is an Agile shop and runs development according to sprints.

Timesheets by Tempo provides one convenient location for all these groups with disparate work styles and pay structures to log time. The product allows users to be as specific or as general as they need to be with their management staff.

Addteq has been rapidly expanding their company recently and what they’ve had to take on all sorts of challenges.

Kaplan added: “As we scale up at such a rapid pace, time budgets have allowed us to plan down to the week in terms balancing our growth spurts with sustainability.”

Results

So how does the team and rest of the employees at Addteq feel about using Timesheets?

“The best kinds of products are the ones that folks don't even notice. Logging time in tempo is so intuitive that it becomes second nature to most employees by the end of their 3rd day or so,” says Kaplan, “People don't even realize they are using the tool, as it is so painlessly integrated into their work process. Tempo is so easy and so useful that you'll wonder how you ever used JIRA without it.”

Kaplan added: “As an Atlassian expert that sells both licenses and services, often a company's budget limitations will mean that the more licenses the client buys, the less cash is available for us to earn on implementation services.

“Nevertheless, because we believe in Timesheets by Tempo so much, we usually advise the client to install Tempo. This comes at a short-term cost to our bottom line, but by recommending such a great product, Addteq can help implement a great solution and prove itself a trustworthy advisor.”