Guides
Estimated vs dedicated hours: how to spot a project drifting
Syncro keeps three different things apart: what you plan, what you estimate and what you actually log. Reading them together is what tells you a project is drifting while there is still time.
Most teams discover that a project took twice the expected time when it is over. By then the only options left are explaining it or absorbing it.
The fix is not a better memory: it is keeping three separate numbers and looking at them once a week.
Three layers that never get mixed
The same project produces three different sets of hours, and confusing them is the usual reason a report stops being useful.
- Planned hours: blocks in the weekly planner. It is an intention — what each person expects to work on and when — and it is not a commitment.
- Estimated hours: one number per task, set when the task is created or edited, including while it still lives in the backlog.
- Dedicated hours: the time actually logged on each task, with its date and an optional note.
Planned hours are intention, and the tool says so
A two-hour block in the calendar does not create two dedicated hours. The planner shows what people intend to do and compares it with what they log, but the step from plan to time entry is explicit: you register the hours, or you convert the block with one action.
That distinction matters. A planner that writes time entries by itself produces a report that looks complete and is fiction.
Progress only counts what can be compared
The report compares estimates with dedicated hours, and it only does so for tasks that have an estimate. Tasks without one are still shown, with their hours, but outside the balance: mixing them would produce a percentage that means nothing.
From those two magnitudes the report derives the remaining hours (estimate minus dedicated), the excess when you go over, and the progress percentage. All three refer to the same project scope, not to one person.
What to do with the number
A deviation is not a verdict, it is a decision point. Once a project has consumed most of its estimated hours with a good part of the scope still open, there are three honest options: reduce scope, move the delivery date, or agree on more hours with the client.
The weekly review exists to choose one of those while it is still cheap. After the estimate is consumed, all that is left is the explanation.
What Syncro does not do
Syncro tracks hours, not money: it does not calculate cost, margin or invoices. If you need the economic side, export the report to CSV or print the summary and take it to the tool where you invoice.
Being explicit about that limit is useful: the hours are the input, the pricing decision is yours.
Frequently asked questions
- Do planned hours appear in the reports?
- No. Reports work with estimated and dedicated hours only. Planned hours belong to the planner and are compared with dedicated hours there, day by day and week by week.
- What happens to tasks without an estimate?
- Their dedicated hours are shown separately and do not enter the balance or the progress percentage, because there is nothing to compare them with.
- Can I see progress per person?
- The official comparison is the project total, because the estimate belongs to the task and is not distributed among people. Per-person hours are shown as a breakdown, not as individual compliance.