How to Manage Multiple Projects

Managers, supervisors, program coordinators, project managers, construction supervisors and team leaders from all over the world must possess the skill to manage multiple projects. Managing multiple projects, while shifting your attention from 1 project to the next, and performing the tasks well are developed skills. Whether you manage 3 or 13 projects, your ability to multi-task is critical in meeting project goals, objectives and deadlines and to contributing to the success of every project. 1. 1 Hold a meeting with the client and other appropriate people to define the scope of work for each new project.
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List the project goals and any additional expectations. Discuss each step included in the scope of work. While you're in the meeting, bring up questions or concerns you may have about the project.

2. 2 Determine when you can begin work on each project. Schedule a kick off meeting the day the work will begin to answer any additional questions that the client may have. Be sure to determine an appropriate due date, as well. It's important to do your best to meet both dates. 3. 3 Draw up a quote and contract outlining the scope of work for each project.

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Submit the quote and contract to the client for approval. If there is anything the client does not understand or if there are items he does not agree with, he will bring it to your attention for discussion before approving the work. Make necessary changes to these documents and resubmit for client approval. Be sure the client signs and dates the contract approving the project before any work begins.

4. 4 Prioritize your projects. Know which projects are more important. You'll want to make projects with earlier deadlines a priority.
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Be aware of deadlines as you're working. It's important to stay on track with each project, meeting each milestone.

5. 5 Track the progress of multiple projects with a spreadsheet or another type of software geared toward project management. Include important dates, milestones, supplies, contractors, team members and any other resources you need for the projects. 6. 6 Schedule resources appropriately between multiple projects. Equipment should not sit for days before you use it, and team members should not have to wait for others to complete something before they can begin their work.
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Rotate team members, contractors and other resources, like equipment, to ensure you meet all the needs of every project.

7. 7 Delegate work to your team members. It's always a morale booster to show confidence in your team.
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Develop group and technical leaders to improve efficiency, lighten your load and free up some of your time for more important tasks.

8. 8 Check project progress daily. If you have projects with longer deadlines, you may be able to do this once a week. The main thing is to ensure you stay on top of the work.
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Make certain all projects move along as planned. This is especially important when managing multiple projects. Getting behind schedule on even one project can cause delays on several.

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Follow up with all your clients periodically and provide progress reports. You can do this in person, with written reports or with phone conversations. Choose the method that works best for your client.
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Review the project. Let the client know what items you have completed, if there are problems and what the next steps are. Be prepared for any questions or concerns the client may have.

10. Read about development of our project scheduling software

11. Managing Multiple Projects with Success Nov 22

12. This is a guest post from Brad Egeland - IT/PM & Business Strategy Consultant & professional PM & Technology author. Read more about him at www.bradegeland.com 13. Managing one project at a time to success is challenging enough. More than 50% of all projects fail and a recent study discussed on the PMI.org forums indicated that as many as 76% of all projects fail to some degree. While that figure seemed high, its not all that surprising. 14. Now consider that many project managers are running several projects at once not just focusing on one single project. The prospect of keeping multiple projects in focus and on track as well as successfully managing several project teams and customers simultaneously can definitely add to the potential for multiple project failures. 15. If we, as project managers, are going to be successful in managing projects especially concurrent projects several supporting features must be in place. The list is long, Im sure, and most project managers have their own idea of what supporting structure their organization and their project management office (PMO), if one exists, should provide. Here are four things that are definitely at or near the top of my list: 16. Executive management support 17. Executive buy-in is critical to the overall success of an organizations project management infrastructure. Any PMO without high-level leadership support is doomed to fail. If your executive leadership doesnt support your project organization, then funding may not be there when you need it, critical project resources may not be available to you or may get pulled to other tasks, and highly visible mission critical projects may completely circumvent your PM processes as executives in the organization hand those projects to other departments or favorites that are not part of your PM structure. 18. Strong leadership 19. PM organizations need a strong leader who is well versed in project management but is not actively managing projects. A PMO director who spends too much time with handson project management wont be there to knock down barriers for the project managers, cater to their training needs, and help with onboarding critical resources to highly visible projects. A PMO director focused on the needs of the PMs and the organization as a whole will be a much greater contributor to project successes than one who is too focused on the daily project leadership grind of managing a handful of their own projects. 20. A sound methodology

21. No project management structure can succeed long-term without a sound project management methodology in place. There must be project plan shells and templates, reusable processes, practical policies, and a shared knowledge of project information available to the project managers who make up the PMO of project infrastructure in order to achieve ongoing and repeatable success. Without these things in place the PM organization will be relying far too much on luck rather than proven successful practices to deliver ongoing project excellence to the customers they are serving. 22. A solid resource planning tool 23. I cant say enough about how important a resource planning and scheduling tool is to the success of your projects. Having a tool that enables this as well as providing you with a firm grip on the resource forecast for the entire project and across all projects is essential. Several web-based tools can do a fairly good job of this for you. One specific PM tool, Ganttic, that I recently became familiar with seems to do an especially good job at handling this function. Ganttic does a very good job of organizing your project teams for maximum efficiency while allowing seamless collaboration within each project.