TimmyOnTime Review

Use Instant Messaging (IM) a lot? Whichever client you pick, here's a quick and easy way to keep track of your projects and tasks while chatting...with Timmy.

July 5th, 2007 at 4:00am — Comments: (2) — By: Jonathan Danylko — Tags: Opinion

As a freelance developer/consultant, you always need to keep track of your projects and how much time you spend on them. I've seen some interesting ways of tracking projects using applications, but never with an Instant Messaging (IM) robot (bot).

Calling Timmy!

The concept behind TimmyOnTime is the ability to manage the time dedicated to a project through IM's such as GTalk, MSN, and AOL. All you need is an Instant Messaging client and you're ready to go. Consider Timmy like your very own personal project manager who doesn't bug you every 10 minutes and never needs a vacation.

I do like the idea of no software needs to be installed per-se. You do need to install an IM, though.

TimmyOnTime is broken down into 3 categories: projects, tasks, and sessions. The projects are what your clients ask of you or a particular freelance job you need to complete. Each project contains one or more tasks to complete the project successfully and a session is a one or many time periods that you dedicate to a task to actually complete the task.

With that out of way, let's get started. If you are using GTalk, start it up and add timmy@timmyontime.com as a new contact. If you're a user of MSN, add timmyontime@hotmail.com. If you're a user of AOL, add timmyontime as a buddy.

Once you add timmy@timmyontime.com as a contact, you're all set. Double-click on Timmy and talk to Timmy in his language: Project Management Speak-ese. Type "Create Project <projectname>" where <projectname> is what you want to call your project. If you just type in "Create Project" and enter, Timmy will ask you what is the name of your project.

Type in your project description and hit Enter. Now you can start entering your tasks for the project. You can add all of them at once or add them as you go.

Timmy, get me a coffee!

Unfortunately, that's not one of the commands, but there's a lot of other chores for Timmy. Some of the primary commands for Timmy are:

• Create Project [<projectname>] - Creates a new project with description. The projectname is optional, but it speeds up the process.
• Restore Project [<projectname>] - Restores it from being removed. Same applies for the projectname again.
• Remove Project [<projectname>] - Deletes the project.
• List Projects - Displays the list of projects.
• Create Task [<taskname>] - Create a new task under the current project. taskname is optional.
• Start Task (or Start or Begin) - Start a session running under the current task.
• Stop - Stops the current session and logs the time under the task.

These are just some of the commands available, but the entire list is available under the documentation portion of the site.

Timmy on the Web

If you need web access, you can go to TimmyOnTime.com, log into your area, and view the results of your project's tasks and sessions. Most of the commands available on the IM client are mimicked on the web access side, but there are a few missing.

For the web access to be fully implemented, every command that Timmy obeys through the IM client should be available through the web site as well. For example, I could "remove a project" through the IM client, but I logged into my web area and couldn't delete a project.

I also noticed that no roles or permissions were put in place. I wouldn't want a disgruntled employee to delete all of my projects I set up. :-)

Pricing

If you have a small project that isn't going to take a lot of your time, you may want to look into the monthly payment plan. The payment plans are as follows:

$4.75 - One month

$14.25 - 3 months

$28.50 - 6 months

$41.50 - One year

Keep in mind, these plans are per user. If you have a 10-person team and you want it for a year, that's $415. Not bad considering most project management packages cost that much...and more with support.

Conclusion

If you are freelance developer or consultant, you may want to look at TimmyOnTime.com. It's great for watching the progress of projects, tasks, and sessions. It's also great for the small company who is churning out small applications that don't have time for a project plan, but want to keep track of the project in some manner. Some projects in small companies move so fast, it's hard to keep track of what has been done and what needs to be done.

Make no mistake. This is not project management software. It is a time management system. Just because it says that it creates projects, tasks, and sessions doesn't mean you can assign tasks to other individuals or schedule dates or resources for an upcoming task.

This type of application is great for the speedy Micro-ISV (1, 2, or 3 person company), but for some medium to large sized companies, they may want more management features or get the misconception that it's a project management utility.

I would imagine that's where version 2 comes into play.

I can just see the author of TimmyOnTime saying:

"Timmy, set up version 2 and GET ME A COFFEE!"