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This paper was presented at CUMREC '97, The College and UniversityInformation Services Conference. It is the intellectual property of the author(s).Permission to print out copies of this paper is granted provided that the copiesare not made or distributed for commercial advantage and that the title and

authors of the paper appear on the copies. To copy or disseminate otherwise, orto republish in any form, print or electronic, requires written permission from theauthors.

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Project and Employee Time Tracking

for Information Systems and Technology

About Georgia State University

Georgia State enrolls one tenth of all students in higher education in Georgia. The second-largest

university in Georgia, Georgia States students represent all fifty states and 107 foreign countries. The

university offers some fifty graduate and undergraduate degrees in over 250 areas of study through its six

colleges and schools: Arts and Science, Business Administration, Education, Health Sciences, Law, and

Policy Studies. Georgia States campus is situated in Atlanta, the heart of the Southeasts business,

government, retail, convention, health-service and legal activities.

Abstract

The need for the information technology (IT) support organization to track work effort supporting diverse

areas in the institution results from technological and competitive factors that have come to bear upon the

academy. Georgia State University has implemented a Resource Management System (RMS) that

addresses this need. The system is built upon a relational database in a client server environment.

Interfaces to the system are through Oracle client server forms, Oracle reports and Web interfaces. The

system supports maintenance of data about:

Project definition and organization;

Individuals, teams and departments involved in accomplishing this support;

Preferences and privileges of system users, and

The entry of information into worklogs, which designates the worker, project, activity,

benefiting area, date of work, amount of time worked and notes.

J. Reid Christenberry

Associate Provost for

Information Systems and Technology

rchrist@gsu.edu

Joe Sturgeon

Manager, University Information

Systems and Processes

jsturgeon@gsu.edu

Georgia State University

Information Systems and Technology

Atlanta, Georgia 30303

November 14, 1996

BACK

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Project and Employee Time Tracking

for Information Systems and Technology

The RMS project at Georgia State is an outgrowth of forces that are currently shaping information

technology in higher education. The prime force is simply rapid change itself and the need to know how

resources are being committed in a changing environment. In the past eighteen months information

technology support at Georgia State has undergone dramatic change. It has been reorganized under the

aegis of a new unit called Information Systems and Technology (IS&T). A new Chief Information Officer

for the university has been hired. At the same time, planning has begun for conversion of legacy

mainframe applications to client server applications. The University has decided to purchase, rather then

build, administrative applications. Client server conversions and an upgrade of the network infrastructure

has begun. These institutional changes are taking place within a new management environment

emphasizing work perspectives that are customer-driven, process-focused, team-oriented and project-

based. These perspectives have not always been part of the computing tradition at Georgia State.

Review of recent literature about higher education information technology support will show that Georgia

State is not an isolated island of turmoil in a calm sea. Behind institutional changes are new technological

forces that are shaping education and the working world at large. Retrenchment, downsizing and

redirection are banner words for these forces. They raise the question, How should the energy and

scarce resources of the institution be allocated to accomplish the academic mission? This is particularly

relevant when compared with former times of less rapid change, less focus on technology and less

competition.

From the viewpoint of practitioners in administrative computing in higher education over a long period of

time, the focus on resource allocation may seem to turn the world upside down. Long gone are the

isolation of the raised platform glass house and the industrial strength machine room. For many years,

the programmer convinced the user of the need to computerize their recordkeeping. Many systems

were built in this way: there were no systems to buy. Programmers enjoyed the position of being in-house

magicians and could always pull one more rabbit out of the hat in an emergency. As time went on, these

individual systems were integrated with each other and, with integration, came added dimensions ofcomplexity and interdependence. Soon, the systems began to talk to outside systems. Private networks

and dial-up lines were used to communicate with government agencies, financial aid service providers,

banks, other educational institutions and the business world at large. Concurrently, systems were

developed to put terminals directly in the hands of the ultimate end user the student. These

terminals were first and are predominately still touch tone telephones and, more recently, Internet

access to systems through the World Wide Web.

High demand for applications is fueled by the strategic necessity that institutions meet the world in a

high tech arena. Studies have shown that ITs contribution to profitability may be hard to prove, but

there is no doubt that it is a strategic baseline necessity for entering the contest. (Hitt, Brynjolfsson, 1996)

The managers of higher education are required to use IT but they are also constrained to minimize its

cost. This has created a demand for off-the-shelf, industrial grade software that can replace the cottage

industry of in-house development and expensive programmer craftsmen. The trend toward purchasedsoftware is concurrent with the accelerating trends of standardization and inter-communication of

information. This, too, has led educational administrators to cast a desirous eye on purchased systems and

a wary eye on the cost of in-house development.

Despite the desire to curtail costs and buy off-the-shelf, demand for computing services in higher

education normally will greatly exceed the production capacity of the IT support organization. Customers

expect more. At the same time, applications are more complex and interdependent. Modification and

enhancement are, therefore, more complicated. The modification and consequential maintenance of

purchased software can be very expensive. Then too, democratization of access has added a multiplicity

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of new customers. Computer expertise can be found in diverse places throughout the university. A

diversity of skills and skill levels are available in the IT support organization. Standardization,

specialization and modularity are watchwords in the industry. Customers know a lot more about

computers then they did ten years ago. They know the computer can do this for us and they want their

needs addressed. There are many more customers than before. On top of this, higher education itself is

receiving increased scrutiny from its supporting constituency groups. Governing bodies demand more

accountability. More quantitative measures of productivity and implied costs are being implemented forhigher education as a whole. This combination of factors has fueled the question: What goes on in IT

and why are we spending so much money on it?

For the IT organization this question of resource allocation can be embarrassing unless there is a method

to demonstrate productivity, cost containment and comparisons of benefiting areas. It has long been the

case in computing and software development that, while hardware costs are diminishing, the cost of

human resources are always increasing. Therefore, the Resource Management System (RMS) has been

initially aimed at delivering information about what people are doing and for whom.

An Overview of RMS

The Resource Management System (RMS) at Georgia State is used to record and report Information

Systems & Technology (IS&T) work activities. It contains descriptions and classifications of projects and

can show who worked on a project, the hours worked and the area within the university benefiting from

the work. The application is divided into three main data domains:

Projects: The first data domain consists of information related to the description of a project.

A project can be either a unit of work, a task or a collection of tasks which can be ordered into a

hierarchy of dependencies. Some projects, like COMPUTER OPERATIONS are ongoing, or

standing, projects. Other projects, like INCREASE YEAR TO FOUR DIGITS IN

ACCOUNTS PAYABLE REPORT (RSBCOSAP) have specific expected completion dates and

are more one-time in nature.

People:The second data domain has information about employees and customers of IS&T. All

users of the system must have individual data on file like ID, Name and password. This data can

also be arranged into a hierarchy showing supervisor-employee relationships.Organizations: The third main data domain is composed of information about teams and

benefiting departments. Teams and department are separate data types. This information can

also be arranged into hierarchies showing parent-child relationships.

There are many relationships between data domains. The link between project and employee is of primary

importance. This link is manifested through worklog transaction records entered into the system by

employees. Another important relationship is established between project and benefiting area. The

detailed worklog transactions can be entered containing a benefiting area other than the benefiting area

normally associated with a project. This means that a project can have an expected benefiting area,

while the actual work done benefits another area.

Worklog transactions also contain an activity field. Activities are actions such as Programming,Design or Documentation performed on a project. In addition to being linked by worklogs to

employees, projects are also assigned to an employee, to a department (within IS&T) and to a team. Other

relationships in the data include grouping employees into team memberships and departments, recording

privileges (access rights) and preferences of employees, grouping contact people with a project,

associating activities with projects, and associating activities with worklogs.

The functional interfaces of RMS are: 1) a set of Oracle client server forms (version 4.5), 2) a set of World

Wide Web HTML forms using cgi-bin technology and 3) a set of Oracle client server reports (version 2.5)

that are launched from a client server form menu. The client server forms interface consists of separate

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panels to maintain and display employee, team and department, project, project organization, employee

preferences, and worklog data. The Web forms support worklog entry, ad hoc project entry, worklog

review, project notes review, benefiting departments review, and project hierarchy review. The reports

allow parameter selections such as by date range or benefiting department. They show things like time

logged to projects, the projects on which employees have worked, missing worklog activity, and project

work hours by benefiting department.

All employees of IS&T are required to make worklog entries that record project, activity, benefiting area

(if other then the default associated with the project), date and hours worked. In addition, the worklog has

space to record project notes so that an employee can be more specific about what was done. These notes

can be recalled for later use. Employees can also enter new projects. These projects come into the system

without a hierarchical parent assigned and are reviewed by the RMS administrator for assignment into a

project hierarchy.

Typically, employees enter the system through a Web browser. They are presented with a log-in form on

which they enter their RMS ID and password. They are next presented with a menu form with a default

setting to the worklog entry form. When the worklog form is presented it contains pull-down Web form

fields for selection of:

All projects, recent projects, and preferred projects,

Activities (recent, all, preferred),

Benefiting departments (recent, all, preferred),

Month, day, and year, and

Hours and tenths of hours worked.

A table is also presented that lists entries for the current (or a selected) day. The use of pull-downs

guarantees the validity of data. The entry process appears to take about five to fifteen minutes per day per

worker.

How RMS Benefits the University and IS&T

Return on Investment:The benefit to the University must justify the time spent entering data into RMS,

producing reports and maintaining the system. In the broadest sense, RMS contains information about the

work of IS&T and serves as an indicator of what is produced and how much it cost. The system can

show the University what it gets for its IT staff investment. In the past, it was sufficient to measure (and

perhaps hide) this relationship between cost and production by counting job titles in the computer

center. The work delivered was basically computer support and it benefited the central administration

and a few academic areas such as computer science and physics. Now almost all departments want

computer support and there are many administrative areas competing for application development.

Moreover, the management trend toward teams, cross-training and scaled-down organization hierarchies

has fostered the need to track work activity in more detail than that provided by job descriptions and titles.

The project and activity lists in RMS support this tracking. The first benefit to the University, therefore, is

knowledge of how its valuable human talent is used. With this knowledge, the University can align its

resources with its mission and justify allocation of resources, as appropriate.

Budget Justification:For Georgia States IS&T, knowledge about work activities has the added benefit ofoffering a defense for its budget needs and offering a proactive tool for its budget proposals. Increasingly,

higher education is called upon to measure its productivity and costs with objective criteria like student

hour and degree production against departmental costs. The equivalent for IS&T is to project production

and measure project costs in terms of staff work time. Such time has as a dollar value the equivalent to

the salary and benefits of the workers involved.

Analysis of Services Rendered:The area receiving the benefits of work performed provides another

interesting perspective on work performed. This perspective is more closely tied with the traditional

budgeting structure of the institution. Currently, RMS is not used to support a recharge system. Such

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systems have several negative attributes, among which is the tendency to damper the adoption of

technological solutions. Of course, given the increased demand for computing services and relatively

static IT budgets, it can be highly productive to involve supported departments in the commitment of

resources to a greater degree. However, even without recharge, RMS demonstrates to departments the

time that is dedicated on their behalf. This can help IS&T support claims for more resources as well as

show departments what share of IS&T resources they receive.

Prioritization and Backlog Analysis:A breakdown by benefiting area can also help IS&T management

in negotiations with client departments over project priorities and backlog. The projects for a department

are listed along with their status and work time logged. Such a list is a helpful tool for planning work.

Thus the data in RMS is double-edged: on the one side, it defends IS&T by showing the areas in the

institution that benefit from IS&T work; on the other side, it is a tool for resource allocation and planning.

Activity Analysis:RMS shows the type of activities performed by workers. Is the work time of

programmers consumed by endless meetings? What projects are not accumulating productive work? Is

professional development being allocated its needed time? Is email-reading becoming an added burden?

What are the typical activities of the various IS&T sub units? These and similar question can be answered

with a view of RMS data focused on activity type.

Responsibility and Accountability:Projects in RMS are assigned on three levels:

to departments (sub units in IS&T),

to teams (sub units in departments or across departments), and

to individuals.

Therefore, responsibility for projects is specified from the general area to the particular person. By

assigning responsibility to departments, teams and individuals, RMS fosters both the team approach and

the fact that some one must be responsible for coordinating the activity of a team or performing

productive tasks. The advantage to the University is the clear indication of where responsibility rests for a

project.

Workload Distribution:Project assignment and worklog activity allow IS&T management to track how

work is distributed to teams and individuals within their departments. By knowing who is doing what,

managers can make better decisions on new assignments.

Trend Analysis:Management can also use the system to track trends over time. Activities such as

TROUBLESHOOTING should decrease with the age of a project. If not, there may be a problem. High

maintenance areas observed in the data can be used to focus resources. The effects of quality programs

can be measured by changes in activity. In general, RMS can serve as a Decision Support System. This

factor is enhanced because RMS is implemented in a relational database that will make it easier to access

information with a variety of methods. (Frost, Gohsman, 1993)

Organization of Work and Interdependent Tasks:Another advantage provided by RMS is in the

organization of work. The project hierarchy shows how projects are tied together in a system. Related

projects are grouped together. This draws a clear picture for customers and IS&T staff. Customers can see

what is happening in all areas. Negotiations about the relative importance of projects can be put into the

hands of customers. A clear picture of project organization promotes a customer-driven orientation.

Although RMS is not primarily designed for Project Management and does not offer such things as

Gantt charts, CPM and PERT, it is capable of giving a rough estimate of progress toward completion of a

project. A project definition includes an estimate of the number of hours required to complete the project.

This can be compared to the hours accumulated in the worklog to measure degree of completion. When

the Project Definition form is queried it shows the total worklog hours for the project. In addition,

because projects can be arranged in parent-child relationships it is possible to structure them as a system

of dependencies for the purpose of project management.

Enhancing Staff Awareness of the Value of Their Work Effort:The IS&T policy of being customer-

oriented is enhanced with RMS. This is the result of each worker consciously recording their work project

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and benefiting area. Workers become more aware that their work is a professional service related to a

particular benefiting entity an entity whose satisfaction is the ultimate reason for their work. Customer

orientation is another way of saying that the mission of the university as a whole is taken into account by

IS&T.

Customer orientation promotes professionalism within IS&T. Professionalism may seem rather high-

sounding to many people in computing who are accustomed to taking an understated approach to daunting

tasks. This paper, in fact, has continuously used the term worker because any other term seems either

pretentious or awkward. However, most entry-level positions in IT require a high level of expertise and

the mastery of a complex set of skills. Often, degrees and certificates testify to competence in IT. In

addition, a professional is differentiated from other workers whose skills are less technical and more

embedded in the context of the organization. Professionals apply a standard competency to areas where

other workers may be more opportunistic. That the standardized competence of professionals is measured

by their time is also true for other workers. The difference is that professionals are not so embedded and

can sell their time to a variety of benefiting areas. This is not unlike the situation of attorneys.

Attorneys using automated time tracking almost always report an increase in billed time. (Goldstein,

1992) This supports the contention that RMS increases professionalism by drawing attention to both the

skill that is applied and the customer benefiting from the skill. IS&T workers become more aware that

their time is a valuable corporate asset.

Client Server Pilot Project:A final benefit from the RMS project was the experience gained fromapplication development in a client server environment. This was part of the justification for developing

RMS in-house. Georgia State University plans to move its administrative applications to client server. It

has purchased some administrative software for student housing and alumni/development relations and, in

the near future, will purchase replacement software for Student Information Systems, Human Resources

and Finance. Yet the applications development group had very little experience with relational databases

and client server systems. RMS has allowed the application group to gain experience that includes entity

relationship design, application design, interactive World Wide Web interfaces, UNIX, C programming,

PL/SQL, report writers, Windows programming and the myriad other components of client server.

Moreover, IS&T has gained the experience of running a system that is used by about 150 people everyday

and generates approximately 10,000 worklog transactions per month.

Staff Perceptions - Some Comments Heard in the HallThe joys of entering worklog data into RMS are not yet universally appreciated. The decision to

implement this system was an executive decision. Many in IS&T support RMS for the reasons outlined

above and because they realize that, to compete for its share of the budget pie during a period of rapid

change, IS&T must have hard facts about both the kind of functions it performs and the associated costs.

Some in IS&T prefer the former, perhaps cozier, era in university computing when relating to users was

not mediated by time charges. Yet this very coziness raised questions about who benefited.

One objection has been that entering the data takes too much time. However, analysis shows that the

overall average is 14.5 transactions per week, which is less then three a day. The Web interface requires

just several clicks to enter data. This activity does not take more then 15 minutes per day per person.

Still, the servers are sometimes slow and a browser must be launched. Much effort has gone into making

the interfaces quick and simple to encourage accurate usage.

Part of the difficulty with entering and reporting information is the number of items from which to choose

for projects and activities. This problem needs to be addressed by the RMS administrator and the

management of IS&T. Perhaps, it would be useful to restrict activities to a list of no more than fifteen.

The projects also need to be betterorganized as there are now over 700 and the list grows at a faster ratethan projects are completed.

The problem of too many choices is related to comments about data inaccuracy. Workers can make the

wrong choices. Four months into the program, review of data has centered on making sure that workers

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are completing their logs. Participation by all staff was the initial objective; refinement of data will follow

as a second objective.

The data may not be completely accurate at this time. But as time goes on, and the activity and project

lists are refined, accuracy will increase. The system itself and the ease of constructing relational database

queries serve as helpful tools in this matter. Moreover, compared with what was available previously (no

information), RMS is quite a jump into accuracy. Also, large numbers there are over 40,000

transactions after a four month period give statistical credence to RMS data.

As time goes on, entering data into RMS will become a habit that is far less intrusive on workers time

than it first appeared. It is an overwhelming advantage to IS&T to have quantitative measurements of its

work as it competes for resources. It is better to spend a few minutes a day tracking time than to spend

ones day looking for a new job due to outsourcing, downsizing, redirection or some other variation

of not getting resources because nobody knows what workers spend their time doing.

Review of Selected Technical Features of RMS

RMS data is accessed through three interfaces: client server forms; World Wide Web (WWW) forms and

client server reports. The client server forms are written in Oracle Forms 4.5. The WWW forms are

delivered by a server program written in ProC (C that uses an Oracle precompiler to compile SQL) using

socket interprocess communication (IPC). The reports are written in Oracle Report 2.5 and are called

from a Forms 4.5 menu form.

Client Server Forms

Most of the fields on RMS forms support the Oracle query-by-example mode. This is a powerful feature

for data selection and display. The Query button is clicked to enter query mode. Selection data (wild cards

allowed) is entered in the appropriate field. The Query button is clicked again and information based on

the query is retrieved. Each instance that meets the criteria of the query can be viewed by scrolling.

The client/server interface is entered through the RMS main menu. This menu presents the available

forms and reports. Buttons let users toggle between Form views and Report views. The report and form

selection items are populated from the database. When a new item is needed, it is added to the database

and does not require programming changes. As to be expected from a relational database application, the

items in the Form view of the Main Menu give a good functional breakdown of the RMS system:

Preferences

Project Organization

Project Definition

Department and Team Definition

Worklog

People Definition

On the Preferences form (not shown), users enter combinations of projects, activities and benefiting areas.

These combinations are then available to the user through pulldowns in the WWW interface and the client

server Worklog form as preferred or priority combinations. In this way, the user does not have to

review the multitude of project, activity and benefit area combinations to reconstruct their typical dailyworklog. Thus the Preferences form is one method that an individual can bring order to their RMS

environment. The Preferences form also shows recent combinations a worker has used in their worklog.

In turn, these may be set as preferences. On the WWW interface for worklog entry, the pulldowns for

Project, Activity and Benefiting Area are populated first with preferences, second with recent worklogs

and last with all valid possible entries. The Preferences form can also be used by managers to put project

combinations on a workers list. The ability for one person to adjust preferences for another person is

determined by a set of privileges maintained in the RMS database.

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The Project Organization form (Figure 1) is used to arrange projects into a hierarchy.The plus (+) andminus (-) signs to the left of the form indicate whether or not the projects listed in the detail section of the

form have children projects. By clicking the sign, the corresponding project is made the main query of

the form. Thus this form can be used to traverse the project hierarchy. This interface is also used to assign

parent projects, benefiting areas, workers and IS&T departments to a project. The Capture and Put

buttons at the bottom of the form are used to copy data from one detail field to another.

Figure 1

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The Project Definition form (Figure 2) is used to enter and maintain individual project information. To

enter a new project, the user clicks on New at the bottom of the form, keys in the appropriate

information and clicks Save. The form is extensively populated with function buttons. The Hier

button for example switches project pulldowns on the form from an alphabetic listing to a hierarchial

listing. All projects must have one and only one parent except for the project called All Projects which

has no parent. When a project is displayed on this form its children are also displayed. By clicking the

plus sign (+) next to the child project, that project is made the main query of the form. As can be seen, the

form enables the assignment of a project to a department, team and individual. It allows for the

designation of a default benefiting area. The Total Hours and Last Worklog Date are the result of a

query on current worklog data. Valid Activities can be associated with a project. There are fields of

ample size for project description and additional notes. In a detail section at the bottom of the form, roles

such as Approved or Requested can be associated with IS&T customers and employees.

This form also allows access to special administrative functions. Access to these functions is determined

by RMS privileges associated with a user and is typically restricted to the RMS administrator role. The

special functions are:

Change Project Name - changes all occurrences of project name in the database

Consolidate Projects - collapses two projects into one name

Recreate Hierarchy - creates table entries for the hierarchy view of projects

Change Department and Team - changes all occurrences of a department or team name

Change User ID - changes all occurrences of a user ID

The Department and Team Definition form (not shown) is for establishing and maintaining data related to

benefiting areas and IS&T teams. Essentially, it maintains a department type file. Like projects,

benefiting areas and teams can be organized into a hierarchy by assigning a parent. Child benefiting

areas/teams are shown on the form. In addition, this form can be used to assign individuals to a team and

shows the uncompleted projects assigned to a team.

Figure 2

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The worklog entry form (Figure 3) is used by workers to record time and can be used by management to

review worker activity. Database queries are made by adjusting the query dates or clicking the radio

buttons. Various combinations of preferences and recent worklogs are available as templates for the user

by way of the pull-down bars above the detail section of the form. An editor window is available by

double-clicking the Notes field. Controls are used to adjust date, time and hours.

The People definition form (not shown) maintains information like workers name, department, title,

functional area and employment date. Various types of address data such as e-mail, phone and room can

be associated with a person. This form also contains secure information such as RMS password that isonly available to users with the required privileges. Secure information can be viewed by clicking the

View Secure button. User privileges are also maintained on this form.

World Wide Web Interface

The WWW Interface to RMS consists of a server program called ora_rweb, a cgi-bin program that pumps

label and value data to ora_rweb, a group of Unix files corresponding to the various functions supported

by the interface and the SQL embedded in ora_rweb. The Unix files are for the most part HTML.

However, they do contain certain tokens and symbols that, when read by ora_rweb, cause variable

substitution and function calls. Thus the design is fairly modular in that similar functions and variables

can be reused by embedding their corresponding token in the diverse HTML pages. The tokens are

variables that stand for commands and data. The commands are interpreted by ora_rweb.

Figure 3

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The WWW forms in RMS are:

Worklog Entry - Users record project, activity, benefiting area, date, hours and notes

Project Request - Users enter new projects to be reviewed by the RMS Administrator

Worklog Review - Worklog records are queried for a date range

Benefiting Areas - Worklog records are queried and summed for a Benefiting Area

Project Notes - Project detail and notes are queried

Preferences - User preferences for pull-downs are designated

Project Hierarchy - The project hierarchy can be traversed

The Worklog Entry form (Figure 4) is the primary way users enter worklog data into the system. The

server program presents this form with table data showing log records for the last date of activity. Users

can query a date by selecting from the date pull-downs and clicking the query button. The Project,

Activities and Benefit Area pull-downs have Preferred, Recent and All sub-divisions.

Figure 4

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Figure 5 is detail from the Worklog Review Form. Queries to the database are made by selecting a workerfrom the pull-down and a date range. An HTML table displays the results of the query.

Reports

Standard RMS reports are selected from the client/server menu form. The available reports are:

Department, Worklog, Project Summary

Detail Worker Report by Worker and Day

Project Assignments

Project Worklog by Benefiting Area

Project Hierarchy

Project Detail Sheet With Worklog

Under-Logged Hours by Week

Worklog Benefit Area, Worker and Project

No Worklog for Week

When the report name is double-clicked Oracle Forms launches Oracle Reports. A parameter form is

presented by Oracle Reports that allows selection specification.

Figure 5

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Figure 6 is detail from a report that is used to audit data by showing employees who have not logged the

expected time during a work week. The selection parameters allow filtering by date range and an

allowance percentage. In this case employees can under report by ten percent and not show up on this

report as an exception. One great advantage of relational databases and sql is demonstrated here: the

ability to work extensively with date functions. In this case, daily worklogs are collapsed into a week and

the hours are compared with the expected hours recorded in the workers person record.

Some Preliminary Research

Two examples of the type of information

about IS&T that can be gathered from the

system are shown in Figures 7 and 8.

Figure 7 is a graph of average worklog

transaction per person per week. The data

is broken down by division in IS&T. The

graph shows that, for all IS&T workers,

the average is less than 15 worklog

transactions per week. The greatest

average number of transactions are in

University Information Systems and

Processes, which contains the applicationdevelopment and support group. The least

number are in Technology Initiatives and

IS&T Administration.

Figure 6

Figure 7

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Figure 8 is a pie chart showing the distribution of work by activity types. The activities used when

logging project time were collapsed into nine categories. Such charts could be used by IS&T management

to measure the impact of management decisions about work. A chart for one range of time could be

compared with a chart for another to measure, for example, efforts to reduce clerical work.

Conclusion

Given the technological and competitive imperatives of the times, a system for recording work activity and

time was needed by IS&T to support its position within the institution. The RMS system developed at

Georgia State University has been in production for four months and has recorded over 40,000 log entries

for 150 people. There is much room for improvement with the system, particularly in the area of refining

data options when specifying activities and in characterizing projects. However, for the most part

employees have made a graceful adjustment to a significant change in work procedures.

References

L. M. Hitt and E. Brynojolfsson, Productivity, Business Profitability, and Consumer Surplus: Three

Different Measures of Information Technology Value. MIS Quarterly, June 1996.

R. W. Frost and J. Gohsman, Implementing A Data Administration Function and Strategic Data

Planning At the University of Michigan. CAUSE/EFFECT, Fall 1993.

D. S. Goldstein, Automated Time Tracking: Plugging the Black Hole. Computer Counsel, October

1992.

Figure 8

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