Ron Ashkenas, a managing partner of Schaffer Consulting, writes in Harvard Business Review about the problem of overtaxing your reliable lieutenants. Every organization has its 'glue people,' the ones who don't show up in organization charts but are assigned to every task force or initiative because they are respected and trusted," he writes.
But if you draft the same overworked group every time to handle new business challenges, you won't get any results. First and foremost its the kind of project based on which it can be calculated that how many projects basically can be handled by a PM.
Like I am into online marketing and I have seen PMs in my industry doesn't go for more than projects to give desired output.
Upon overloaded they may have quality concern on their work. A Project Manager does a macro management and if you exptect him to do micro management it will end up in putting more burden on him and you cant expect him to manage more projects..
In this way you can reduce the burden of your PM and you can make him engaged in more projects.. There is no ideal number in how many projects one PM should manage at the same time, it depends on the skill sets of your PM.. For example a Scrum Master running an Agile Scrum project may need to spend more effort per project than a Project Manager managing a 3rd party delivery from a contracted agency.
I've always said that 2 big, 2 medium and 2 small projects are a nice way to compose my portfolio of work. My view on this is it depends on how the project is managed. I work in construction. If I am doing all the project management, include cost, schedule, quality etc. Ideally they would be in different phases, one in design, one in construction and one in defects period. As the number or size of projects increases, my management has to change. I will bring in specialist schedulers, cost managers, quality managers but remain fully engaged with all aspects of the projects.
This is how I managed 50 small and very similar projects. The next step is to bring in assistant project managers, managing one or two projects each.
Now you are starting to work as a portfolio manager. Rather than knowing all the details of the project, you make sure that they are initiated and planned well, receive regular progress reports, and only get involved to deal with exceptions. So in summary, I don't think there is a maximum number of projects a PM can manage, but for a given management style, a ceiling will be reached.
I can tell you that 12 is too many. That is what the owner of the constructions subcontractor expects of me and has assigned to me. So to even have a chance at not completely screwing everything up I've had to work longer hours, which as a salaried employee I do not get paid extra for which hurts.
I will quickly admit, I am a brand new project manager and have taken courses towards my PMP, but haven't taken the exam yet. Currently I am managing 12 construction projects and the smallest, by far, is 6 uber-high end townhomes in DC within a stone's throw of the Capital and my largest job is a high end 44 story apartment complex in Baltimore.
With the rest falling in between that, but more towards the Baltimore job than the townhomes. I am running them with no project team and little to no assistance from anyone else in the office. When I started here as a PM I felt overwhelmed managing 7 projects of similar sizes, but now I miss those days.
Trying to explain the reality that there is only so much time in a workday falls on deaf ears. Don't even get me started on the fact that we have absolutely no systems, standards, or project management software to assist.
I'm forced to plug away at everything with excel templates that I have to develop in a system so full of viruses and malware that I'm not sure if it is someone inside the company deleting my files and changing the formulas in my spreadsheets or some hacker. Make estimation a team sport.
This way your numbers make more sense. We recommend putting time into landing this reboot — a workshop or off-site is ideal. A new process will only thrive once you have clear direction from leadership and the right shift in work culture.
Get these foundations right and process will turn an encouraging new way of working into a sustainable uptick in productivity. Governance needs structure. This starts by having all the projects in one place, with a core set of shared templates to capture data and measure value, before, during and after delivery.
Make change iterative, rather than constantly re-inventing how things are done. Add a Benefits Realization step in your critical path and develop the discipline to always deliver it. Put time into the plan, and incentives into objectives. Failure to learn leads hurts progress. Give the planning process teeth. Or more specifically give it budget, such that any new initiatives must be prioritized properly , and ongoing projects must re-justify budget.
Software will help but be clear about what type of solution you need. Different tools have different capabilities, so determine what matters most to you, and if you need a macro or micro level of modelling.
Model urgency based on real data: external deadlines, risk and cost of delay are just a few of many valid drivers. The project was in the execution phase, with a strict delivery deadline. Unfortunately, I'd neglected to realise there was extra testing needed, to guarantee the software applications security on the Internet before it could go live. I'd not planned for this work and had to scramble days before go live to get a third-party to do the security testing.
Luckily they had people available, and we met the deadline, but it caused some sleepless nights and didn't improve my reputation as a project manager. So, was five projects too many to be managing at one time? In short yes, the fifth project was the straw that broke the camels back. I didn't spend enough time managing stakeholder expectations, allowing a significant work package to become overlooked.
It's not possible to say what the maximum number of projects a project manager should run at once before he or she becomes overloaded.
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