6 Tips to Manage Multiple Projects at the Same Time

Project managers (PM) are tasked with overseeing projects to ensure a streamlined process. They take on many important tasks that will ensure the success of a project, some of their responsibilities may include:

• Liaising between clients, in-house teams, and stakeholders.
• Project planning, scheduling, and managing from start to finish.
• Managing expectations and prioritizing to keep everyone satisfied.
• Analyzing and controlling contracts to close deals and end projects.
• Employing their experience to tackle arising issues.

PMs in small to medium operations may get involved in some high-level work, like leading management or even promoting sales opportunities in startups. A day as a PM focuses on juggling time-consuming tasks for various projects, and can even include wearing multiple hats most of the time during meetings, emails, and calls. They need to update the project status to clients and their team on project schedules while ensuring work is progressing as expected. And all of this while taking care of the team’s resource needs, and monitoring the budget expenditure.

 In Elizabeth Harrin’s 2020 Project Management Survey, she found that only 15% of PMs lead 1 project at a time, 15% lead more than 10 projects at the same time, 11% lead between 6 and 10, and 59% lead between 2 and 5. Although managing multiple projects is a trick of the trade, it can be extremely difficult without the proper tools and knowledge. Today we will do a deep dive into what can help in these scenarios. 

 Handling multiple projects at once can be complex. A good way of understanding what needs to be done in order to keep everything going smoothly is taking note of the usual hurdles:

1) Scope Creep

In an ideal scenario, a PM can plan ahead and forecast the tasks needed to meet the project’s milestones and stick to them. But even if the PM has abundant experience, they are still inserted in a context that is permeable to modifications. Rarely a project requires no changes, more often than not, these modifications come by the hand of the client. Requesting additions and changes greatly affect the scope of work previously scheduled for the project. And it can hinder the project’s timeline as well as the team’s performance.

In order to manage these types of situations, a PM needs to be flexible, and take certain precautions from the get-go. Scope creep is such a common affair that it isn’t too far-fetched to account for some delay time in order to balance the possible impact on deliverables, task dependencies, cost, and resources. 

2) Unrealistic Client Expectations

Without further ado, let’s delve deeper into this topic we mentioned before. The divide between what a client wants and what a client asks for can be a ground for re-works and additional requests.

A lot of unsuccessful endeavors come from trying and failing to meet unrealistic client demands while trying to take care of the team members and charging the same fee for the whole operation. That’s a recipe for disaster. When this happens across multiple projects it can be very damaging. 

So PMs who manage several accounts need to be able to have an accurate grasp on what the client requirements are, and what are the Contractual obligations for both parties. So whenever there’s an unrealistic demand they can inform the client how much it will cost. Maybe it costs time, allowing the team to stay on track and keep multitasking their different projects. Or if the client insists on keeping their due dates, it will affect other variables, increasing the fee for example, in order to meet the talent demand.

When dealing with clients, the best approach is transparency and data-driven decisions. Make sure your project management tool is able to collect the necessary information to negotiate with clients and explain to them why their requests will affect the projects in certain ways.

3) Poor Communication

Having to keep track of multiple projects may hinder communication and collaboration across teams. Project managers need to have a clear visualization of how tasks are going and how they affect their dependencies in order to have a chance of avoiding arising problems. Having the right communication tools is vital to sustaining a good collaboration strategy, something that is even more important now, with the rise of remote working.

A number of possible productivity issues are born out of a failure to communicate efficiently and properly: poor resource management, disorganized work delegation, delivery date delay. This can be solved with a project management system with task management functionality,   notifications, APIs with the usual messenger apps, a transparent and user-friendly dashboard, and an accessible Gantt Chart to show the progress made at a simple glance. 

4) Stress

Project managers have an extremely stressful job. On top of having to answer to clients, check-in with the team’s work, keep a streamlined workflow, and promote a successful project management methodology, PMs also have to keep track of time management, resource allocation, and budgeting. Doing all of these in a multi-project management scenario.

It can be an enormous amount of work, and it may end up oversaturating the PM, leaving them liable to burnout. The pressure of delivering successful projects every time can be a challenge. A good way of handling these problems is to implement a time tracking initiative. 

With time tracking you can create an efficient tasks management blueprint for the PM and the talent involved in each project. Getting to see the amount of work time, and not of tasks, that every employee has been assigned, allows everyone to know how much each person has on their plate, and easily avoid oversaturation with a glance. Even if there is an extremely important task that is time-sensitive, you can communicate this and shift the workload in order to accommodate it. 

5) Managing Resources Across Multiple Projects

Deciding how to allocate resources, and being able to understand the internal processes of the operation is a great way of managing multiple projects at the same time.

Effective project management is far from throwing money and talent at problems. Resources are limited, and a good PM can allocate them without compromising results. In order to make the most out of limited time and budget is to prioritize projects. Here are some useful starting questions:

• Which projects are central to the business’s agenda? Which is the higher priority?
• Which projects can be left temporarily on the backburner? 
• Are there any projects that can be shifted to other teams or PM? Are the projects time-sensitive? How much do the other teams have on their plate?

Now it is time to consider the three most important resources a project requires: time, people, and money. In an ideal scenario, you’ll have the three of them at the same time. But this is rarely the case. So, there are compromises to be made.

Here is where knowing your talent and keeping detailed data of previous KPIs is key. In what area does each collaborator shine? If the top project at the moment is urgent and will require the highest standards you will most likely allocate the top employees on it, they will surely be up to the task. Do you have another project that requires a specific skill set? You can look for the tasks that are involved and check for internal performance regarding past endeavors. You can select a team that compliments each other on their blind spots.

The takeaway from this is the importance of having the right datasets to support decisions and to guide the best way of going forward. And doing so in a way that doesn’t put pressure on the project team with unreachable deadlines. Here is where powerful project management software comes into play. If PMs are expected to rise to these challenges, doing so without an adequate tool is a recipe for disaster.

6) Managing Your Time Across Multiple Projects

 Tightly monitored Schedules

Scheduling is an incredible challenge while managing multiple projects. The team has limited capacity, so allocating resources without compromising other operations is difficult. The solution is to plan the schedules early. Facing this issue head-on lowers the chance of resource overlaps while allowing you to prepare for highly demanding periods.

You can improve the scheduling effectiveness by evaluating when each type of project needs the most resources. Generally, regardless of the type of deliverable expected, or field of work, it is at the tail end of the projects when deadlines approach. It is possible to minimize and localize when and where it will happen. Professional businesses offer a limited amount of services and project types. If you know ahead of time that Project type A usually has a more even distribution of milestones, then you can plan accordingly knowing the scope of workflows along with the important deadlines. But if Project type B requires a gradually increasing scope of work, then you can introduce more status reports to crystallize an even distribution of work along with the project progress.

Once this is determined, you are able to plan the schedule for weeks ahead of time and prioritize the allocation of work hours. Doing this with a window of time also allows team members to delegate work in a timely manner if they need to. This is the peak of project management skills and not micromanagement.

Status updates

Review and balance the workload routinely. This can be hard to monitor for an oversaturated PM, as one project is going great, the top priority for the business had some issues that required a lot of attention. And before you know it the other project that was not urgent at the start of the week has fallen behind schedule. It is easy to lose track of a fall in productivity when there is so much happening at the same time. 

Making a habit out of status reports and a team’s workload is vital to maintain steady progress. Schedule check-ins across every project to see if tasks are going as expected. Yes, meetings can eat up a lot of time, but it is worth it if it minimizes delivery issues and it keeps the talent in a healthy workspace. A possible baseline for these meetings can touch upon 3 topics:

• Are they able to manage the amount of work they have? Are they oversaturated?
• What are the most difficult aspects of their day? What are the most challenging tasks?
• Are they interested in the work they do? Do they feel bored or inspired?  

Understanding the workload of the teams tackling the projects can help dramatically with resource allocation and scheduling. It can even help with grander issues in employee¿s morale. You can see if shifting or overlapping certain kinds of projects or clients is overwhelming, and introduce a different type of work between them.

Automated PM solutions can make a great change in the way the internal processes are managed. Automated templates can decrease the time spent creating a new project or task, and reduce the time employees of every level lose while doing menial and mundane tasks. 

Not every PM is ready for multiple projects and balancing several teams. But when an opportunity knocks on the business’s door, now is not the time to scare it away. With the rise of remote work, many companies have managed to open their doors to new members and whole teams that work from every corner of the globe. This is great news, but it shines a light on a changing working environment and collaboration dynamics.

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