Is there a way to measure knowledge workers time spent on articles?

[Chandra53]

Is there a way to measure knowledge workers' time spent on articles? For example, I have a team that wants to measure how many hours are being worked creating, editing, and reviewing, knowledge articles. 

[Lauren Methena · Accepted solution]

Question for clarity: Does the entire creation process within ServiceNow? For example, we have people write drafts in Word very often. If so, a system outside ServiceNow would be better able to capture all the steps of your process.

[linniesea · Accepted solution]

I had another thought. I used to use one when I was a software developer with multiple contracts. You could trust your writers enough to use a timetracker app, and they can log each activity or just all their work on an article. I found a writeup on one that sounded really good in this article: https://zapier.com/blog/freelance-apps/

[Kim27]

Good question. We were able to add time worked on KFTs. But I'm interested in hearing if anyone has an idea on how to measure these other activities. 

In the past, I've had my team manually time themselves when creating or reviewing articles to come up with an average. But nothing formal. 

[sushantmalsure]

if knowledge article is state driven then you can think of creating a metric definition on this table and then measure how long the article was in each state.

That will give you idea about it.

Just a thought  

[linniesea]

Hi Chandra53,

Is your expectation that you will be using SNOW as a writing tool? As a consultant who has worked at many SNOW implementations, we use this tool differently. We use Word for the initial article, and then, once it has been reviewed, we import it into SNOW. 

I have worked for companies that put tickets into SNOW for each document or article they want written and then start tracking time on each ticket from the start date to completion. The problem with doing that is that it makes the length of your total open ticket numbers and time KPIs go way up, and your writers look slow. So I do not recommend that you do that. 

You can find the time in Word for how long a writer edits a document. It is in File>Info under Properties. Unfortunately, it includes the total time the document is open and not the actual time the writer is typing. 

I have to wonder about the quality of the work environment where a company wants to measure work output. I worked at a company that did that a few years ago. I am a fast writer, but another writer who worked with me was not. She stole my work and passed it off as her own out of fear of being fired. I blame the company more than her for putting all that pressure on her. They put us in competition with each other, and she was much less experienced. It wasn't fair to her. This is what gets created when you start to measure tasks that require skill, thought, and creativity. IMHO. 

[Lauren Methena]

This. Linniesea has the behavioral and ethical considerations. I gave some logistical considerations why tracking time in ServiceNow isn't really a thing. Combined, there's a lot to think about with your process and your motivation for wanting to determine time spent on articles.