20分のポモドーロ

クラウドソーシングの利用者から、20分を1ポモドーロとすると請求をする上で都合が良い、というフィードバックがあった。この場合、3ポモドーロで1時間になるので、1日の労働時間を計算するのが容易になる。

クラウドソーシングは時間単位で顧客に請求するので、労働時間も計算が容易なのがメリット。これは状況に合わせた手法の修正の良い例である。

(The technique traditionally uses 25-minute units, separated by short breaks. I use the Pomodoro technique and I find the 25-minute unit unwieldy. Here is what I do: I estimate how long a task should take, and then break that down into 20-minute units. Three such units add up to one hour, and this makes it easy to calculate my actual working hours at the end of the day, as 3 units equal one hour. It therefore doesn’t matter how long my breaks are sometimes I need to pay attention to my daughter, or my cat is hungry, or my dogs need attention and my breaks are longer than the planned 5 or 10 minutes. This means that the amount spent ‘at work’ is irrelevant, what is relevant is how much time was actually spent on a task.

What I have noticed is that people are insecure about changing ‘prescriptions’ or ‘rules’. I think people should be encouraged to adjust the 25 minutes to either 20 minutes or 30 minutes – or stick to the 25-minute units if they wish, based on their own power of concentration and preferences, to make it easier to calculate, in ultimate units of hours, how much time they estimated, and how much time was actually spent. But this is just an additional thought.)

nishio.iconYour suggestion to make the unit to 20 or 30 minutes is also interesting. Encourage readers to adjust rules is good thing. I want to include the story as a column or merge into main story in future, but at this time I should translate the rest of sections first.