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What are your key skills to manage multiple projects simultaneously? What tools do your use to prioritize your work and what are the key skills? How do you manage to get through the day when you have to juggle all of your tasks? The. Things?
These questions and many more were answered by our community. The insights were very insightful. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in a good light. We’ll be diving into statistics in this article and you’ll learn:
The top challenges for people who manage multiple projects simultaneously
These are the key skills needed to manage multiple projects
These are the top tools to prioritize work every day
This was not a survey about project portfolio administration at the PMO level. I wanted to find out what it was like to have a workload that includes multiple projects.
Which of these challenges are you facing as a manager of multiple projects at once?
Case study
Study the key skills required to manage multiple projects.
Study your methods to prioritize your work.
What is stopping you from being productive?
Study your projects to see how they relate.
Study how to streamline your work.
This is what project management looks like
Notes on the research
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Which of these are the challenges you face when managing multiple projects at once?
People who manage many projects face the biggest challenge: feeling like they are not getting enough done due to time pressure. 62% of respondents stated that this is a problem. Project managers want to do a great job. It’s difficult when there are many balls to keep your eyes on and a lot of work to do. Although tasks get completed, they may not be done to our satisfaction. Every task is a compromise.
One respondent said that it was difficult to keep up with quality and timelines. If you want to maintain quality, the only options are to reduce scope or ask for more.
“The problem for me is that management doesn’t make a decision upfront about what’s important, but waits until every detail is known. It wastes a lot of time and effort to decide not do it,” wrote another. “Repeat the next one.”
Next came the challenge of working longer hours. This was reported by 46%. This could be due to the fact that 44% reported that their manager gave them more work.
One project manager wrote, “New work is being assigned to without being reviewed for priority and as part of long term strategy/plan,” while others added similar comments about the absence of organizational portfolio management.
Poor strategy planning and poor implementation are two of the reasons you won’t reap the benefits.
Other corporate requests are not coordinated, so I am trying my best to complete my program work while being bombarded by multiple requests/deadlines.
Competing priorities in which everything is priority #1.
Is there a saying that says, “If you want something done, give the task to a busy person.”
We’re efficient at getting things done, even though project managers are busy. Managers can trust us to provide guidance and deliver results.
Work is falling through cracks
34% of project managers report that work is falling through the cracks. This is a problem for professionals who manage multiple projects. No one wants to lose the ball.
Case study
“I am thinking about a situation where I had two projects with different sponsors, but the stakeholders overlapped. The problem was that one project had some issues and I was being pulled more by that project because of that. The sponsor of the other project raised concerns that his project would fall through the cracks. It didn’t, and his noise caused more frustration.
Anonymous project managerWhat is the key?