How much time does class placement actually take?

Class placement takes as long as the full workflow requires: collecting reliable information, recording rules, drafting lists, reviewing them, and communicating approved placements. The time spent generating a draft is only one part. We do not have a measured school sample that establishes a typical total or a guaranteed Shibutz time saving.

Choose the workload and units first

Compare the same cohort, starting data, staff-review requirement, and finished output. Do not compare manual preparation for a whole grade with software generation from an already cleaned roster. A fair endpoint is an approved, reconciled list ready for communication, not merely a result on screen.

• Person-hours count staff effort. Three people in a one-hour meeting use three person-hours.
• Elapsed working time counts the duration of an activity. That meeting lasts one hour, not three.
• Calendar lead time runs from the start date to approval and includes waiting for information and available reviewers.

Log participants and minutes for each activity. Sum each person's minutes once and divide by 60. Work that happens in parallel can reduce elapsed time without reducing person-hours. Waiting overnight for a response changes calendar lead time without adding a night of staff work.

A synthetic worksheet for one 72-student cohort

The numbers below are illustrative assumptions for one grade, three rooms, the same source roster, and the same required staff approval. They are not observations, benchmarks, a customer case study, or a prediction of Shibutz performance. Replace both columns with your team's recorded effort.

In this example, each non-meeting stage is done by one coordinator. The review meeting is one hour with three staff, already counted as three person-hours in both columns. If all stages run sequentially with no waiting, elapsed working time is 14 hours manually and 11 hours with assistance: subtract the two additional attendees' hours from each person-hour total. Calendar lead time remains unknown until the school schedules the work and records delays.

The assumed effort difference is 16 - 13 = 3 person-hours. That result follows from the inputs, not from a product measurement. The assisted column includes extra configuration time and keeps data gathering, provision review, the staff meeting, and communication unchanged. Training or a difficult import could erase the assumed saving.

What software changes, and what still needs staff

In Shibutz, you can import a roster, record supported placement rules, generate a draft, inspect the results, and export to Excel. Import still requires checking mappings, invalid values, and possible duplicates. Staff must judge support provision and decide which requests become rules; the app does not obtain that information for you.

For a usable baseline, start the clock when the school opens the roster review and stop only after the approved list is reconciled for release. The class placement checklist names the review points that should remain in both a manual and a software-assisted cycle. If a principal needs to coordinate the dates, use the school-year planning checklist alongside the time log.

A generation duration is not a complete placement duration. Include setup, failed attempts, revisions, final checks, and any work done outside the app. The Shibutz walkthrough shows the actual workflow without assigning it an unsupported completion time.

Measure your next cycle

1. Write the cohort size, room count, roster version, rules, and approval requirement at the top of the log.
2. Record each stage, date, participants, active minutes, waiting time, and whether it was rework.
3. Keep review meetings inside the total, not in a second overhead calculation.
4. Reconcile the final roster and document unresolved tradeoffs before calling the cycle complete.
5. Compare totals only after checking that both workflows covered the same stages and quality checks.

For a first pilot, use a synthetic or appropriately authorized de-identified roster. Track training separately so later cycles can be compared fairly. Do not extrapolate a single smooth trial to every grade or school.

Decide what a saving would be worth

If the log shows less staff effort, name the work those hours could support, such as transition planning or family contact. This is a planning choice, not evidence that software improves student outcomes. The cost worksheet explains how to value time without counting it twice.

Use the placement signoff checklist to hold the quality requirement steady. To try the assisted workflow and record your own figures, create a free Shibutz account.