Faced with an increasingly demanding environment, many companies are adopting project management. The danger of drift appears early. Multi-project management presents key issues with potential impacts on the success of strategic planning:
- Manage ever-increasing mental load.
- Meet the overlapping deadline.
- Maintain employee productivity.
To achieve peace of mind, several methods allow you to manage a portfolio of projects and monitor it effectively without creating unwanted stress.
Both your teams and managers have everything to achieve by implementing them and installing management tools. Codeur.com and monday.com give you their advice on how to avoid stress while managing your multiple projects.
1. Centralize Your Projects
Managing multiple projects essentially starts with centralization within a single tool. Given the number and complexity of projects in a company, Excel is now quickly obsolete.
Teams are diverse and can come from different departments, so fostering collaborative work is essential. Without centralization, you risk being overwhelmed and the risk of failure is real.
Consolidating your portfolio will allow you to:
- Scramble easily between your different teams, deadlines and your dashboard;
- To keep an accurate list of progress of tasks, accessible to all and at any time;
- Manage the allocation of resources effectively.
The global dashboard is useful for optimizing your management and controlling drift risks.
2. Define Objectives Well
The first phase of a project includes your objectives: they are essential to determine when drafting the specifications. Reflection should lead to appropriate and achievable objectives assessed at each project level. Thus you will have a complete cartography.
Some objectives are required:
- time limit.
- nature of delivery.
- Budget respect.
This roadmap can be integrated into your multi-project management tool.
Be cautious: objectives must be understood and therefore precise.
The smart method will be useful, but above all remember the following:
- Time must be precise: a certain date is required.
- It is important to measure objectives: 10% increase in turnover, 15 new customers citing examples.
- They have to be realistic, at the risk of immediately discouraging your teams.
3. Prioritize Tasks
To define your priorities, focus on the objectives that have the most impact on the company’s strategic management and the resulting risks. For example, if the overriding objective is focused on growing business, focus on the project and the tasks that allow it to be achieved quickly.
Prioritizing also allows you to manage the allocation of resources: if you notice that one of your employees is overloaded, you can refocus their activity on the tasks identified as priorities.
The Eisenhower Matrix will come in handy. You can define tasks according to their urgency and importance criteria. You can then manage them easily, for example by using the Kanban method.
4. Adjust Calendar
Unstable deadlines are one of the biggest stressors for your employees. The increased pressure can lead to serious conditions like burnout and hence stoppage of work. Appropriate retroplanning limits this risk.
In addition, often poor practice concerns poor management of deadlines when managing multiple projects that have multiple deadlines on the same date or are too close together.
A device allows you to detect these drifts in the blink of an eye. For example, you can use a Gantt chart and identify these sources of stress.
Adjusting the calendar by staggering deadlines will allow your employees to better manage their workload, and give you peace of mind.
5. Avoid Micromanagement
This method of management can be detrimental to the teams. This results in an intense and excessive control over the work of the employees, which is perceived as a lack of confidence.
Delegation and trust are the keys to getting out of this system. By leaving room for employees to maneuver, they will be more involved and more calm. An effective tool allows them to prioritize their tasks on their own.
A retroplanning combined with a global dashboard will allow you to detect load drifts or alerts on time limits, without tyrannizing teams. If everything is under control, let them do so and continue to follow your dashboard without constantly asking for reports from them.
You should focus on macro management and manage the risks while making the necessary trade-offs. For example, the OKR method can help you find the right balance.
6. Use the Right Tools
To implement these tips and methods, a management tool will soon become necessary. monday.com was created to support teams in project management, saving time to be efficient and productive.
You will be able to build a centralized project portfolio. monday.com provides you with ready-to-use templates to make set up easy. Two models would be particularly suitable:
- “Multiple Projects” Template
- “Advanced Project Management” Template
monday.com provides for setting up automatic alerts: email reminders make it possible to estimate deadlines and monitor priority milestones or deadlines. Employees are guided in the performance of their functions.
Several integrations also facilitate collaboration: Slack, Zoom or Teams are among the applications that sync with monday.com.
Quick to learn, automated tasks and easy sharing: Our project management tool will help you achieve your goals and motivate teams.