Faced with an increasingly demanding environment, many companies adopt project management. The risk of drift appears quickly. Multi-project management presents crucial challenges, with potential impacts on the success of the strategic plan:
- Manage a constantly increasing mental load.
- Meet overlapping deadlines.
- Maintain employee productivity.
To gain peace of mind, several methods make it possible to manage a project portfolio and monitor it effectively without generating unnecessary stress.
Your teams as well as executives stand to gain by applying them and implementing a management tool. Codeur.com and monday.com share their advice to help you avoid stress when managing multiple projects.
1. Centralize your projects
Managing multiple projects inevitably starts with the centralization within a single tool. Excel is now quickly outdated given the number and complexity of projects in a company.
Teams are diverse and may come from different departments, so it is essential to promote collaborative work. Without centralization, you risk being overwhelmed and the risk of failure is real.
Grouping your portfolio will allow you to:
- to easily juggle your different teams, deadlines, and dashboards;
- to have an accurate overview of task progress, accessible to everyone at any time;
- to effectively manage resource allocation.
The global dashboard is useful for optimizing your management and controlling the risks of drift.
2. Clearly define objectives
The first step of a project involves your objectives: it is essential to determine them when writing the specifications. The reflection must lead to reasonable and achievable objectives, assessed at the level of each project. You will thus have a comprehensive mapping.
Some objectives are essential:
- Deadlines.
- Nature of deliverables.
- Budget compliance.
This roadmap can be integrated into your multi-project management tool.
Make sure objectives are understood and therefore precise.
The SMART method will be useful, but above all keep the following points in mind:
- Timing must be precise: a specific date is essential.
- Objectives must be quantified: a 10% increase in revenue or 15 new clients are clear examples.
- They must be realistic, otherwise they will discourage your teams from the start.
3. Prioritize tasks
To define your priorities, focus on the objectives that have the greatest impact on the company's strategic management and the resulting risks. For example, if the priority objective is centered on revenue growth, emphasize the project and tasks that will achieve it quickly.
Prioritization also lets you manage resource allocation: if you notice one of your employees is overloaded, you can refocus their activity on the tasks identified as priorities.
The Eisenhower matrix will be useful. You can classify tasks by urgency and importance. You can then manage them easily, for example using the Kanban method.
4. Adjust timelines
Unrealistic deadlines are one of the biggest sources of stress for your employees. Increased pressure can lead to serious situations like burnout and therefore work stoppages. An appropriate reverse schedule limits this risk.
Also, a common bad practice when managing multiple projects is poor deadline management, with several deadlines on the same dates or too close together.
A tool lets you spot these issues at a glance. For example, you can use a Gantt chart to identify these sources of stress.
Adjusting schedules by staggering deadlines will allow your employees to better manage their workload, and you will gain peace of mind.
5. Avoid micromanagement
This management style can become harmful to teams. It results in intense and excessive monitoring of employees' work, which is perceived as a lack of trust.
Delegation and trust are the keys to breaking out of this system. By giving employees room to maneuver, they will be more engaged and more at ease. An effective tool allows them to prioritize their own tasks.
A reverse schedule combined with an overall dashboard will let you detect workload drifts or deadline alerts without oppressing the teams. If everything is under control, let them work and continue to monitor your dashboard, without asking for constant reporting.
You must focus on macro-level steering and manage risks, making the necessary trade-offs. The OKR method, for example, can help you find the right balance.
6. Use the right tools
To apply these tips and methods, a management tool will quickly become indispensable. monday.com was created to support teams in project management, saving time to be efficient and productive.
You can create a centralized project portfolio. monday.com offers you ready-to-use templates to ease implementation. Two templates will be particularly suited:
- The "Multiple Projects" template
- The "Advanced Project Management" template
monday.com provides automatic alerts: email reminders help anticipate deadlines and track milestones or priority timelines. Team members are guided in carrying out their tasks.
Several integrations also facilitate collaboration: Slack, Zoom and Teams are among the apps that sync with monday.com.
Quick onboarding, automated tasks and easier sharing: our project management tool will help you reach your goals and motivate teams.
