The new general manager wants some suggestions for tracking the time we spend working on stuff.  It's pretty much going to be a waste of time/money, as the Scrum process makes it irrelevant.

I used to have a coworker who always had an Excel spreadsheet open to record what he worked on, but frankly, I'm not that disciplined, plus that approach doesn't scale.

Has anyone ever used an app for this that didn't suck balls?

Email me.  That's the next project we'll be making once the current one is done, and we need a guinea pig - I mean, beta tester.

That'd be nice, especially if we had input into the design.  But I think our timelines don't coincide -- he said he wanted three alternatives by Friday. :-(

Thanks anyway.

"But I think our timelines don't coincide -- he said he wanted three alternatives by Friday. :-( "

Only because this one won't turn into a sale for Aaron, http://www.allnetic.com/working-time-tracker/ . I used the free 1.x version and I LOVED it. Can't vouch for the 2.x version, but as long as the core functionality is the same, plus stuff like export to CSV or whatever, it should rawk.

Aaron - this is what you should be aiming for. :-)

http://timesnapper.com/

This basically takes screenshots at preset intervals.
Good for visual tracking, maybe not so for registereing data.

What makes me think that all timesnapper will get is this?

http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/2537/untitled1xk5.gif

That is exactly why I stopped using/trying it after 1.23 minutes ;)

Thanks!

I think x suggested the Allnetic thing a couple years ago and I remember looking at it then and thinking it was good, but overkill for what I wanted.

How many people?  Throw together a simple tracker of your own...

Sure, I've been recommending it since circa 2001 when they started tracking us at work. Sits in the systray, and you click stop/start in the little popup. It pops up automatically if you go/come back from being idle & asks if the idle time should have been considered working on that project or not.

At the end of the day/week you get a nice summary of the work you did on each project, and you can fudge the numbers (I did a lot of this) until they match the number of hours you worked.

I used this one. Didn't suck too bad:

http://www.asp.net/starterkits/downloadtimetracker.aspx

You could try slimtimer.com , it's an online time tracking application that relies on a timer popup (or in the system tray). I built it for freelancers, like me, and small dev teams that do a lot of task switching through the day.

Let me know what you guys thing