DevelopmentNow: Project Timer

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Project Timer

Overview

The DevelopmentNow Project Timer is a simple application that lets you enter in projects and track the time you spend on them. You can track different projects on different days, and record notes about particular projects.

Why Should I Use Project Timer?

Well, you don't have to, but there's no harm in trying it out. :)

I wrote Project Timer for myself at a time when I had many different clients and projects to manage, and it was getting a bit tricky to track my time across them all. Especially when sometimes I could spend an hour bit by bit, first answering a few emails, then troubleshooting a product, then reading bug reports, then taking a phone call, etc.

So, Project Timer provided a few key benefits for me

It helped me track my time more accurately
It served as a gentle reminder of what projects I had going on that day
It helped me be a bit more focused & not switch between projects so much.

The last one is particularly important. Programmers can lose productivity to "switching costs" when they jump out of the middle of a task into another one. Joel Spolsky calls this "context switching" harmful. Peopleware talked about how programmers worked best when they were in "a state of flow," and how interrupting this is harmful (nice writeup on this by Ray Duncan).

Installation

To install, just download the zip file, extract it to a new folder, and run the EXE. Note that you must have the .NET 1.1 runtime installed (you can get it at Windows Update).

The software has been tested on Windows XP Pro, SP2, but it should work on any computer that supports .NET 1.1.

To uninstall, simply remove the program and its folder.

General Use

To use, start up the program. Once you begin working on a project, enter or select a project name in the dropdown, and click Start. You'll see the timer tracking your time. Once you're done working on that project, click Stop. You can enter in new projects to track time against, and use Start/Stop to add time to the currently selected project.

You can also use the Edit button to set or update the time for a particular project, or to add notes to a project.

Projects are grouped by day, so by picking a different day from the date picker at the top, you'll see that day's projects.

Project Timer remembers your data (in a file in the Project Timer directory), so you don't need to worry about losing your notes or times.

Screenshots

Main Screen

Project Edit Screen

Privacy

The application stores no personal information, and does not phone home or connect to the internet in any way.

Price / Licensing

The DevelopmentNow Project Timer is free. Use it any way you want as long as you don't in any way alter, distribute, or sell it without DevelopmentNow's prior written approval.

Contact

You can always get the latest version of this application at DevelopmentNow. If you have questions, comments, suggestions, or problems, contact us. Remember that the application is still in (very) beta, so let us know what you'd like to see!

Coming Soon

I'm looking into a way to synchronize the data with online time tracking sites like SlimTimer, but for now your data is just on your local machine.