1) 4 weeks of approved timesheets showing what your project teams have been working on

or

2) you get up and walk around twice a day and only two days a week, at different times of the day and different days of the week, to observe what randomly chosen people from different groups are working on. As much as possible try not to interrupt people or look too “suspicious” as this would change the results. What you are trying to do is observe without interference. Take notes and record your data each time. After 4 weeks you have some sample data.

At the end of the 4 week period, compare your sample measurements to the timesheets, and status reports you have for that same period.

I ran this expirement for 4 weeks by observing the following departments in our company: sales, support, R&D and service teams. The results were quite surprising. I will share the results with you in a future blog. In the mean time, I look forward to getting your feedback on which option you think is a more accurate measurement of what people are working on.