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SW2008: is 45 hours too much?

I track time spent on various projects using a tool called Timebox. I have an IT project that I use as a catchall for tasks that involve software installation, debugging, etc. Time spent writing up and sending SW problems is included and is the major contributor. From Jan

1 to Mar 1 which is two months I have racked up 45 or so hours on this project. That is a whole week of lost time. To be fair, about a day was spent rebuilding my machine after a power supply/hard drive failure. Still that amount of time is unacceptable. On the other hand I didn't include all the time spent remating assemblies.

Do any of you peeps keep track of time spent fixing instead of producing?

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That is about 97% uptime If you do not include the time fixing the drawings.

Bob

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sycochkn

Let's see, January had five weeks, February had four. That makes nine weeks total with one week plus spent debugging, if you wan't to call it that. 1/9th was 11.1% the last time I checked (88.9% uptime). If you figure the burden rate for my time is $50/hour that amounts to $2,250 for the downtime. If this story repeats itself for the rest of the year that amounts to $13,500 for the year in lost productivity. BTW the downtime includes installing service packs. The real issue is that the kinds of problems I see do not necessarily occur consistently, but crop up in certain models. So I can't really be sure at the start just how long a job will take.

If you are seeing 97% uptime then that means $3,000 for the cost of the down time during the year if you use SWX 100% of the time, 40 hours per week. You probably don't use SW the full 40 hours per week. As I calculated the 88.9% uptime assuming 45 hours per week SW usage let me be more realistic and say that I am using SW 25 hours per week with other duties and meetings intervening. Then 45 / (5*25) = 36% downtime. This really isn't stellar performance.

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I would say that the only thing that makes it acceptable or unacceptable is your own assessment of it. What is it compared to the alternatives (including nothing at all)?

Matt Lorono

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fcsuper

I do have an alternative. We also have UG. I might be able to justify the learning curve.

I'm wondering if I am experiencing what others are seeing. Matt, do you track time spent installation/configuration/fixing/debugging problems with SW? Things like assembly mates, installation problems, command manager problems and the like. If you aren't tracking the time you can't say much.

If 2008 gets stable towards the end of its release cycle I will have an alternative which would be to stay with 2008 till another release gets to an acceptable level. If 2008 doesn't get stable then I have to consider switching. Obviously the cost of switching is high because of proprietary file formats and the lack of interoperability. I can ameliorate some of the cost by skipping service pack installs. Since

3.0 didn't seem to fix any of the problems I am having I can wait till 4.0.

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