for my final year project (BSc Software Engineering) I am looking at time entries for software applications, and whether they accurately reflect the development of the project, and whether they can be improved or automated.
For this I will be prototyping a plug-in for Visual Studio using VSPackages that will automatically track which files are being worked on, assigning the files to tasks and projects. The plug-in will also track periods of inactivity within Visual Studio.
This will then be backed up via a simple Web Application for non-technical staff to pull reports from, so that projects can be tracked very accurately.
I currently work in a small company (10 people) and cannot get the large set of data I need to gain a good conclusion from. For this reason I ask if it would be possible to discuss the topic below and if you have a few spare minutes to fill in my questionnaire and email me the result to the address contained within the document:
http://www.mediafire.com/?dmrqmwknmty
Cheers,
MiG
In answer to your question, development time entries are important. But you can’t measure them through a single IDE, nor indeed through any software. The development process is a complex one involving discussions, planning around a whiteboard, diagrams sketched on a piece of paper, research on the Internet, etc etc.
Read Jeff Atwood’s excellent post on laziness and the other posts he refers to there. A good, successful developer spends time away from the IDE making sure they don’t spend 90% of their working day reinventing the wheel, or 50% of their day heading down the wrong track because they haven’t thought the design through.