hoursalongside

Hoursalongside is a term used to describe the practice of tracking work hours in parallel with the specific tasks, features, or outcomes they support. It aims to link time spent directly to delivered work rather than recording hours in isolation, offering a more transparent view of labor costs and productivity.

Origin and usage of the term are informal. It has not been codified into a formal methodology and appears in discussions among project managers, teams experimenting with time-tracking, and commentary on cost accounting. The concept has surfaced in case studies and pilot programs within agile and service-oriented environments, especially where granular visibility into hours per deliverable is valued.

Implementation typically involves mapping each hour to a task or outcome. Teams might use time-tracking tools that tag hours to specific features, user stories, or service incidents, creating datasets that show hours per feature, per sprint, or per customer outcome. This enables analyses such as cost per deliverable, time-to-complete per feature, and resource allocation efficiency, alongside traditional budget and velocity indicators.

Benefits and criticisms reflect a balance between clarity and practicality. Proponents argue that hoursalongside enhances accountability, supports more accurate costing, and aligns time investment with value. Critics caution that the approach can add administrative work, risk over-fragmentation of work, and raise privacy concerns if monitoring becomes overly granular.

Related concepts include time tracking, activity-based costing, and outcome-oriented management. Hoursalongside remains a niche idea, cited mainly in discussions about refining how time relates to tangible work results rather than a widely adopted standard.