HOW MANY PROJECTS IS ONE TOO MANY FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION?

Enough research exists to show that Multitasking, doing more than one thing at the same time, is a killer of both efficiency and effectiveness. In an organization and at an individual level, how many projects one is working on simultaneously in a given time period, of say a day or a week, defines the level of multitasking. Efficiency reduces because Project durations can get longer if you don’t work on the ideal “one project at a time”. Here’s a simple example to illustrate this.

Assumptions –

1.     There is one person who can devote 8 hrs per day and needs to work on both the projects

2.     Each project takes 8 hrs of effort to complete

As you can see, just by prioritizing work, the average duration can reduce. Think what this can do when you have multiple projects and you are able to push higher impact projects out the door quicker so that they start generating money sooner!

Effectiveness suffers due to the negative impacts of context switching and the dangers of Work in Progress (WIP) becoming ‘obsolete’. In the case of a knowledge worker, obsolete WIP could be a piece of software that was left unfinished and now requires tremendous effort to just understand what it was all about.

Multitasking can be reduced by carefully choosing what to work on a given day. Attributes such as the priority of a task, whether it falls on the critical path of a project, what is the financial impact of the project etc can help make such a decision. However, an organization itself can be a driver of multitasking at an individual level by opening up too many projects at the same time. Answers to the following questions can help determine the right course of action: -

1.     Do you measure the WIP (Number of Projects open at any given time) in your organization?

2.     Is the WIP increasing or decreasing over time?

3.     What is the number of projects that your organization or team can handle at any given time for maximum effectiveness?

Let us take each question and see what data can help answer it.

Measure of WIP – Simply counting the number of open projects at any given time can be a good place to start. Of course, you can slice by type of projects and all that but oftentimes the simpler metric is better.

How has the organizational WIP changed over time? – Go back a couple of years and measure the WIP as defined above in say each quarter. Look for trends in a group and subgroup level and you can spot areas where the WIP may actually be increasing. This shows that the throughput is unable to keep pace with the inflow and will lead to extended project durations and associated negative impacts.

What is the optimum WIP for your organization/team? – A good way to arrive at the answer to this question is to make an organization level Kanban that might look something like this.

* Add all projects and the Job roles that make up the bulk of your resources

Ask the question “Will Project A finish faster if I add Software and/or Hardware engineers from Project B?”

If the answer is “Yes”, you have already opened up one more project than you should have.

When you stare at your organization’s Kanban and ask the above question, I bet the answer would more likely be “Yes” than it will be “No”!

So think carefully before you start a new task or delegate your subordinates with one. Do you let the one on the plate finish before you do so?

Posting links to two articles that I found very relevant to this topic.

https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/organizations-that-work-on-fewer-projects-at-a-time-get-more-done

https://www.google.com/amp/s/hbr.org/amp/2012/05/how-employers-can-make-us-stop