The race for competitiveness and performance is leading companies to work more and more in project mode. The cross-functional nature of these projects and the versatility of their skills are undeniable assets, but they do not always meet the imperatives of working "at the same time". How should companies think about multi-project management?
Your company has a goldmine just waiting to be mined: the hard work of your teams. But you're missing out on opportunities, because you're carrying out projects one after the other, even though there are simple methods and tools for managing a large number of projects in parallel.
A real strategic challenge for companies, multi-project management solves the problems of work overload and meeting key dates, while respecting current operations. Project management expert Michel Carrière talks to us about three key areas for development if you want to master multi-project management within a team that must, at the same time, carry out operational activities.
Prioritising projects with higher added value
Managing a projectIt's about responding to a need, a customer or a service. In the case of a fictitious company that we'll call Koodeta, we need to respond to the projects of our many customers at the same time as the demands of our internal departments. To respond as effectively as possible to these orders, we have opted for a hierarchical structure.. At the beginning of each month, we prioritise our projects according to two criteria: those with the best return and those for which resources are available.
Prioritising projects
Let's go into more detail. Each project is assessed on several criteria. The first criterion identifies mandatory, regulatory or ultra-priority projects. The second assesses the financial profitability of the project. The others assess the alignment of the project with the company's development strategy and the likelihood of the project's success. The criteria depend on you. Here are a few of them:
- How will the project contribute to the future of Koodeta?
- How easy is it to achieve? (complexity, uncertainty...)
- what are the risks for the company?
- what is the likelihood of the project's success?
At Koodeta we have retained these:
- Do we have the human and material resources needed to carry out the project?
- How scarce are the resources required for the project on the market?
- What is the cost to Koodeta of using the project deliverables?
- What is the rate of increase in Koodeta's performance? (For internal projects)
- How many customers or market shares can the project win?
In this way, projects are assessed against business expectations.
Once all the projects have been evaluated, we order the list by placing the priority projects at the top, followed by the best-rated projects in descending order of interest.
Tracking key resources
The second point consists of collecting resource consumption forecasts for the month for each project: financial, design office, etc. We only monitor the types of resource that are "under stress". At Koodeta, these are the architects in the design office. This information is included in our project list.
Launch the right projects at the right times
At the beginning of each month, we go down the list, starting with the priority projects. We authorise a launch on condition that we have the capacity to carry out all the key resources monitored. And after each authorisation, the availability of these resources is updated with the quantities that have just been committed. We repeat this process as long as we have sufficient quantities of all the key resources tracked.
This process ensures that the projects we launch are the highest priority and the most interesting.. And because we don't exceed our capacity, we increase the likelihood of meeting our commitments and satisfying our customers.
What about projects not launched this month? They're on the list for the following month. Because we are totally transparent about our management process, our customers know and understand the reasons for our decisions.
Optimising the use of resources
This raises another issue for multi-project management: all the members of our team produce project deliverables at the same time as they work on the day-to-day tasks of their department.
The chosen tool (MSProject server, Oracle e Business suite, Orchestra, etc.) necessarily needs detailed, up-to-date workload plans. To do this, we connect it to team members' diaries to retrieve attendance information. And so that we don't get bogged down in detailed management, we have chosen the quarter day as the basis for calculating staff working hours. We have integrated BAU (Business As Usual) activities and ongoing project tasks into the tool. I'll leave you to imagine the cost and time involved in setting up this tool and training the team.
As a result, we have abandoned this idea for two reasons:
- implementation requires a high level of detail in project planning
- updating the data in the tool generated a workload that was disproportionate to our human resources.
This attempt highlighted two important points:
- our company is not ready for this level of organisation;
- the size of the team does not require the implementation of such a detailed activity monitoring and control tool.
Above all a problem of availability
So we had to analyse the pitfalls of our attempt. This led us to consider Koodeta's real needs and capabilities. We therefore chose a less technological and less precise solution, but one that is perhaps more appropriate to the needs of our ETI (intermediate-sized company) department.
It seemed more logical to us not to penalise the company's recurring tasks, which is why we asked each employee for their estimate of the time spent per week on recurring activities. We then deduced the amount of work available per week for the projects: 20%, 40%, 60%, etc. We used this ratio as a moderator for the monthly completion capacity of the project resources in the prioritisation table.
This enabled us to envisage more realistic, albeit macroscopic, workload plans. At the same time, it made us aware of the skills that are most in demand. This led to the recruitment of an engineer to strengthen the design office.
Concerning the multi-project planning tool. We may consider implementing it again. This will depend on our growth. But initially, given the size of our company, this macroscopic approach meets our organisational needs.
Speeding up delivery times
Our multi-project management system has been up and running for a year now. A new type of project is being prioritised. The need is clearly expressed and we have all the resources and skills required to carry it out. The problem is that it's a big project and we're reluctant to launch it as is because the team leaders lack visibility over the availability of staff and material resources beyond three months.
We have two options. The first is respectful of other projects: the project is placed in the pipe (in the process). The hope is that current projects will not run into any problems and that no emergency will slow down the work of the teams so that they can be completed quickly.
The second option is to force fate: you put the project on top of the pile. In this case, we stop all current projects and stop responding to operational requests. We concentrate our work on this project.
There are advantages and disadvantages to either solution, as it has a negative impact on the rest of the tasks and projects in progress.
As not everyone was happy with this idea, we considered a third, more balanced solution.
Sequencing, the key to success
Firstly, we split the project into smaller phases in terms of the amount of work invested and the duration. Then, using our prioritisation tool, we have modified our organisation to allow phases to be launched instead of projects. As the blocks of deliverables and tasks launched are smaller, we find it easier to carry out more projects in parallel, interspersed with operational activities.
And this last technique enabled us to identify deliverables that were similar between several projects and to carry them out in a unique way.
Read also: Why and how do you close a project effectively?
In conclusion, multi-project management is a set of easy-to-implement management methods that make it easier for us to meet delivery commitments for a large number of projects, while maintaining operational activities and creating a healthy, calm working environment. These methods adapt to the business context: they are based on technological tools for large companies, but can be implemented with a spreadsheet or a visual display such as a flipchart for simpler contexts.
