1. Multiproject Management – Problems & Their Solutions
Lead-In
It is no news organisations have to solve more and more assignments, which exceed the competence
of individual line structures and processes. It is no news either that a suitable system for the
resolution of such assignments is project management. As the majority of organisations perform not
one, but multiple parallel projects, we speak about multiproject management. It has its specifics not
only compared to line operations, but also compared to the level of individual projects. Insufficient
treatment of these specifics leads to – often serious – problems. Their good management and
utilisation to the benefit of the organisation is a powerful weapon in both competing in the market
and increasing the company's internal effectiveness.
Largest Problems of Multiproject Management
Problem No. 1 – Competition for Limited Resources
Each organisation has a limited amount of human, financial and physical resources. At the same
time, each organisation, which wants to be successful, has to respond to the environment's
challenges and opportunities. It cannot afford to focus just on one of them and ignore all other ones.
As a result, it solves multiple assignments in parallel – some of them as a project, others within line
structures and processes. These assignments compete among each other for the organisation's
limited resources, what leads us to the problem No. 2.
Problem No. 2 – Priority Management
The competition for limited resources requires managing their assignment priorities. If there is no
effective priority and resource assignment management system, multiple serious negative effects
arise, e.g.:
 Overload of employees involved simultaneously into line and project activities or into
multiple projects, leading to a drop of their satisfaction and (later) performance and
fluctuation, that is in the end to personnel cost growth and entry into a devil's circle:
Employees are dissatisfied, their performance is dropping and some leave -> the
organisation's performance falls below the necessary level -> new staff has to be acquired
and trained -> personnel costs rise (recruitment & selection cost; new hires often demand
higher wages than existing staff), but the organisation's performance keeps declining,
although maybe temporarily (main reasons: performance drop of leaving employees; new
staff has not climbed up the learning curve yet and their training consumes a part of the
existing ones' capacity) -> to so-so maintain performance, the management increases its
pressure on staff and the amounts of work assigned to individual employees -> employees
are dissatisfied, their performance is dropping and some leave...
 „Bad multitasking“– resources (often the most scarce ones) „jump“ from one in-progress
activity to another one, what hugely increases the resolution time of each task they are
working on and sometimes causes also output quality drop.
 As an effect, high work-in-progress, projects' duration increase above the planned one
(even though most original project schedules contain „hidden“ reserves), delayed
achievement of benefits from projects or their decrease (especially critical e.g. when
launching new products) and resource spending overruns (caused by correcting errors and
reworking outputs due to condition changes arisen in the meantime) occur.

2.  Drop of mutual trust between management and staff. The management's position: „Our
projects take too long, cost too much, schedules and budgets are usually exceeded and
benefits are smaller than planned, if there are any at all. This means our staff is incompetent
and/ or is doing too many unnecessary things. So let's outsource activities, which our people
are not performing fast or well enough (usually, this concerns IT activities) and, to keep cost
under control, hire external consultants, if possible from a big renowned company, who will
prepare an optimisation and cost cutting program“. The staff's position: „Management wants
me to do x various things at once, their priorities are changing all the time, I get insufficient
time to resolve the tasks, my budget always gets cut and externals, who are doing the same
things as me, cost significantly more, have higher salaries and are not pushed
simultaneously by multiple task assigners. Plus some optimisation programs all the time,
which will result in more work and duties for me without any reflection in my salary. “
Of course, outsourcing carried out the way drawn above is just a shift of the problem from
one cost item to another, not seldom followed by an increase of total cost without a
corresponding performance increase, and „company diets“ based on generalised mistrust of
the management towards the staff cause more evil than good. What is the right solution
then?
Resolution of Multiproject Management Problems
Unfortunately, there is no miraculous universal solution. The first important step on the way to
multiproject management problems resolution is to understand their existence, causes and effects.
Then, it is necessary to prepare and plan the „cure“. All management members have to be ready for
the fact this cure will mostly require large and deep changes not only in the way how work is
performed, but also in thinking across the whole organisation – and that these changes will impact
also them. Cosmetic changes lead to cosmetic, if any, improvements and, as a classic said: the
problems of this world cannot be resolved using the same methods, by which they were created. “
Another necessary condition is clear and unanimous support of the changes by the whole
management of the organisation. Actions say more than words and changes supported by
management only verbally or even blocked by some of its members are doomed to fail.
For an organisation going through the „cure“ process it is appropriate to engage an external
consultant, who will bring in project management know-how, an unbiased point of view and
experience with the resolution of similar assignments in other companies. Here, emphasis has to be
put on the person and qualification of the consultant/ consultants’ team and contractual guarantee
the assignment will be carried out by exactly those consultants. Most companies providing high
quality project management consulting are narrowly specialised and depth, not a wide range of
services is characteristic for them. They are „boutiques“, not „factories“ with hundreds or thousands
of employees. Engaging the „court“ (at larger organisations mostly a „factory“ type) consulting
company without an objective evaluation of its abilities in this specific area unfortunately often
leads to expensive disappointments.
It is however necessary to acknowledge even the best consultant will not relieve the organisation’s
management from the responsibility for the execution of changes. That is not his role. A consultant
can provide advice or even manage the project, but he cannot do without strong and unambiguous
support of the organisation’s management and staff. Management’s and staff’s support &
acceptance is the key success factor of each change.
And what should be the content of this change? Of course, a bit different for each organisation
depending on its specifics, needs and goals. Its definition should be the result of the analysis
indicated above carried out by the company‘s management and staff, if needed supported by an
external consultant. However, in general a combination of the following measures will be applied:

3. 1. Implementation of a unified priority management system respected across the whole
organisation (including top management) and tied to its strategy, evaluation & remuneration
system and project scheduling & resource assignment system (see below).
2. Introduction and adherence to a project management methodology based on a standard,
internationally recognised methodology (the most widespread and accepted ones are PMI,
IPMA and PRINCE 2 methodologies).
3. Establishment of a central organisation unit, whose responsibility & competence will be
project management – a Project Management Office (PMO). The PMO has three roles:
reporting (information collection, evaluation and distribution), methodology (project
management methodology ownership, adherence supervision, project management
consulting for other organisation units, professional support of staff’s project management
education and certification) and management (management of individual projects‘ and line
activities, line management of the organisation‘s professional project managers). The
competencies necessary for these roles can be built gradually, but if one of them is
neglected, this would have a negative impact on the organisation’s project management
performance.
4. Training staff following the adopted project management methodology, for employees
with key project management roles completed by an independent standardised project
management professional certification. The level of this certification should be selected
according to tasks, which the given employee will perform, his project management
knowledge and experience.
5. Implementation of an effective and unified project scheduling & resource assignment
system. Here, the author recommends not to use the most widespread Critical Path
Method, but the more advanced Critical Chain Method, as it, unlike the critical path,
inherently considers limited resources and the uncertainty included in planned activity
durations. In larger organisations, the implementation and operation of such a system
requires IT support, which should simultaneously cover also reporting needs of the
organisation and of course respect its project management methodology. The description
of the suitability of individual software products available in the market however exceeds
the scope of this document.
Conclusion
Changes leading to successful multiproject management are neither easy nor painless and cannot be
performed from one day to another. The reward for their successful execution and anchoring in the
organisation is the resolution of problems described in this document, effectiveness increase, the
ability to perform more projects in the same time with the same resources or the same number of
projects with reduced resources and, not to forget, gain of a competitive advantage against
competitors, who have not (yet) carried out such changes. This lead will, if used and „sold“
correctly, bring satisfaction of internal & external customers and profit increase. And it is a
competitive advantage, which cannot be imitated quickly or easily – a shift in an organisation’s
thinking is the innovation, which the most difficult to copy.
© 2007 author: Ing. Štefan Ondek, PMP, CIPM/CSPM
E-mail: ondek@mail.t-com.sk
Web: www.linkedin.com/in/stefanondek
Telephone: +421-904-313618