The IT project jugglers guide to achieving the evolutionarily impossible
Are you an IT Project Juggler?
I mean, it says IT Project Manager on your business card, but … juggler would be more appropriate. Especially if you are managing multiple projects.
I’m not sure if this is reassuring or not, but a few years ago, American Project Manager friend Austin told me that it was “OK to suck (sic) at managing multiple projects cos humans are not designed to multitask”.
I, maybe like you, think I am brilliant at managing multiple projects (we’ll come on to this belief later).
There is, however, some scientific support for Austin’s remark.
According to Multicosts of Multitasking by Kevin P Madore and Anthony D Wagner: “We have a hard time multitasking because of the ways that our building blocks of attention and executive control inherently work. To this end, when we attempt to multitask, we are usually switching between one task and another. The human brain has evolved to single task.”
So, the object of this blog is to: (a) if you’re managing more than one IT project, congratulate you for defying evolutionary odds (b) if you’re struggling, share some ideas for how to excel at something you’re not designed to be able to do!
I remember hearing the late Clifford Nass, a psychology professor at Stanford University, talk with NPR about today’s incessant multitasking culture. He said there was evidence that multitasking not only kills concentration and creativity and that it actually wastes more time than it saves. I was intrigued. Ironically, I stopped what I was doing to listen.
KIDDING OURSELVES
If you’re thinking, like me, that you’re great at multitasking (93% think we’re better than average by the way), Nass had news for us, “The research is almost unanimous, which is very rare in social science, and it says that people who chronically multitask show an enormous range of deficits. They’re basically terrible at all sorts of cognitive tasks, including multitasking.”
Indeed, research elsewhere shows that multitasking impairs metacognition, our ability to monitor our own performance on a task! So, not only are we humans not evolved to multitask … those of us who think we can multitask are kidding ourselves.
It gets worse, Nass and his team divided people into those who multitask all the time and people who rarely do, he said, “The differences are remarkable. People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy. They’re chronically distracted.”
“Our brains have to be retrained to multitask … if we do it all the time … brains are remarkably plastic, remarkably adaptable. We train our brains to a new way of thinking. And then when we try to revert our brains back, our brains are plastic but they’re not elastic. They don’t just snap back into shape.”
NEEDS MUST
As IT Project Jugglers though, we have to multitask! How many of us have the luxury of managing a single project from green light to delivery into service and then sashay on to the next project?
No, realistically we’re managing more than one at a time – I did a quick straw poll of colleagues and contacts, the average is four! (Although one PM told me they had seventeen on the go – I’m feeling burned out just thinking about this!!!)
Do get in touch … How many projects are you managing? How many you do you think we can/should manage concurrently?
Personally, I don’t think there is a fixed number for how many projects we can manage at once, it depends on many things, but probably two main factors: the complexity of the projects (and that includes stakeholders’ expectations); and the capacity of the Project Manager/Team (and this includes our expectations that we put upon ourselves)
HOW TO BE A MULTI-PROJECT-MANAGEMENT MASTER (aka how to excel at something we “suck at” evolutionary)
I checked in with three masters of multi-project-management and asked for the secrets to their success. Here’s what they said:
1 – MORE MINDFUL AND MEANINGFUL MEETINGS
Rachel in London said, “Question the reason for every meeting”. “Back in the day, a meeting took some organising! You had to book the room in advance, arrange a time when everyone could attend, shepherd everyone from the kitchen (a meeting necessitates a hot brew!!!). Now an invitation via Teams can ping and within minutes you can find yourself in a meeting!”
Just because it’s easier to meet up doesn’t mean that you should! How many meetings have you attended that could have been a quick call between two attendees or an email? You’re not alone. A study of 100,000 Microsoft employees during the pandemic exposed the level of multitasking during remote meetings, by analysing employee diaries, email and cloud file activity logs, researchers discovered that many employees engaged in work-related tasks during meetings, ironically, because the abundance of meetings left them with insufficient time to complete their actual work!!
“Meetings can be productive and also disruptive!” Rachel says, “At a thought level, I consider calling meetings like I’d consider setting off the fire alarm. Both take us away from our work. So, only when absolutely necessary.”
2 – SHARPEN YOUR PMO
Chris in Edinburgh thinks of the “PMO as a strategic partner” of the multitasking project team, and “regularly assess how the PMO is working” and checks “for any weak links”. Your Project Management Office (PMO) plays a vital role in managing multiple projects by establishing standardised processes, tools, and best practices that enhance efficiency and coordination. By providing a central framework for project governance, the PMO ensures consistency in project execution, reducing risks and improving resource allocation.
Chris says, “The PMO can help prioritise projects based on strategic objectives, ensuring that time, budget, and human resources are distributed effectively, improves communication across teams, ours creates a collaborative work environment and minimises conflicts between overlapping projects. If any aspects of this are under-delivering, we can quickly be in trouble.”
This structured approach and commitment to constant evaluation enables Chris to maintain control over multiple projects, ensuring they deliver business goals. The PMO provides valuable oversight by monitoring project performance through key performance indicators (KPIs) and regular reporting, offers support in risk management, ensuring potential issues are identified and addressed early – it’s wise to keep this machine well-oiled and serviced.
Also, by facilitating knowledge sharing and continuous improvement, the PMO enhances decision-making and helps teams avoid repeating past mistakes and your PMO can drive training and mentorship to project managers, strengthening their ability to handle complex projects (improving their multi-project delivery skills).
3 – ATTEND TO YOUR TEAMS, TOOLS AND TIME
If we’re kidding ourselves that we can multitask in the first place – we are utterly deluded to imagine we can do it with depleted teams. “Know your competency gaps and fill them!” advises Caz from Birmingham. “Think of your favourite sports team, the more competitions they aim to win, the greater the depth of squad they need”, says Caz, “I’m a Villa fan, we just brought in Marcus Rashford on loan to bolster the team, projects should do this!” Stoneseed’s IT Project Management as a Service gives you access to your own “Marcus Rashfords”!!
“We are competing in the Champions League, the Premier League, and the FA Cup, I think we made four changes for the FA cup match at Cardiff, IT Project teams should also select their teams like this to spread responsibility across the portfolio.”
An under-resourced IT project, where the project lacks the necessary resources to succeed (especially people but budget and tools, etc, too), is prone to potential delays, scope creep, and project failure. Happens a lot, right? Now, multiply this by four (or even seventeen) and you can almost hear the creaking of under pressure IT Project portfolios! Common causes include:
Poor planning: Failure to accurately estimate resource needs at the project planning phase. Unrealistic timelines: Setting overly ambitious deadlines without considering resource availability. Scope creep: Adding new deliverable or requirements to the project without allocating additional resources. Unrealistic expectations: Not properly communicating project’s limitations to stakeholders.
In my experience, way too many IT Project teams are managing multiple projects without the necessary people or skills for multiple successful outcomes.
We owe it to our physical and mental health (and the health of our project portfolio) to ensure we have the squad depth to deliver across our commitments. This is not a one-and-done thing though, commit to continuous progress reviews (monitor project progress regularly and identify any resource issues early on) and be prepared to adjust as needed (reallocate resources, alter timelines, bring in PMaaS talent) based on project progress and emerging issues.
GET IN TOUCH
Share your tips for managing multiple projects. Like all in IT Project Management, I do love a challenge. Who knows, maybe we’re not designed to multitask, or perhaps those of managing multiple projects are the evolutionary exceptions that prove the rule! Either way, for IT Project teams, managing multiple projects concurrently is a reality that we are stuck with, and at Stoneseed we have multiple ways to make it as painless as possible!
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