How to Manage Multiple Projects: Strategies and Tips
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The juggling act of managing multiple projects at the same time can have you feeling like a circus performer. You’re rushing around, trying so hard not to drop any of the increasingly wild objects you’re keeping in the air. Even if you’re an expert, you may be left wondering, how do I manage multiple projects at the same time?
Luckily, there’s no big secret – it’s not like every other project portfolio manager has this all figured out. Everyone could use tips and best practices for handling such a feat. But one thing is obvious: when multiple projects demand your attention, a clear strategy becomes the best weapon in your arsenal.
Strategic thinking, intentional planning, and great tech are the building blocks that can help anyone succeed.
This article delivers actionable tips—from effective planning to leveraging technology—to help you confidently lead your team and exceed stakeholder expectations on every project every time.
Discover how Visor can revolutionize your project portfolio management—start your free trial today!
How to manage multiple projects
You can manage multiple professional projects by following this broad process – but the specifics will be up to you, and we’ll cover some of them shortly.
- Define Clear Objectives: Establish specific goals and deliverables for each project so you’re crystal clear on what success looks like. This foundational step is key when learning how to manage multiple projects.
- Break Projects into Tasks: Divide each project into smaller, manageable tasks with milestones, allowing you to track progress in managing multiple projects.
- Centralize Tracking: Use a centralized system or dashboard for your project portfolio management to monitor progress, deadlines, and resource allocation across all projects.
- Set Regular Check-Ins: Schedule consistent meetings with your teams to review progress and address any roadblocks promptly, ensuring seamless multi-project management.
- Adjust and Optimize: Regularly review and update your project plans, adapting strategies to shifting priorities and challenges as part of your ongoing approach to how to manage multiple projects.
A project portfolio management workbook in Visor
Ready to break down some best practices for your multi-project management workflow? Let’s jump into a few major themes.
Multi-Project Prioritization and Planning
If you have multiple projects to manage at once, you’ll need to have strong prioritization methods. This will help you develop clear priorities, set realistic timelines, and allocate resources efficiently to ensure every project receives the attention it deserves. Learn to map out every single one of your projects with precision – even if it feels like overkill. When you have every project on the same board, you’ll be able to see where focus and attention are going for yourself and your teams. That’s just not possible when you skip over the smaller projects or let certain things slide!
An integrated project portfolio Gantt
Assess Urgency and Impact and Develop Timelines
You’ll want to start in the most obvious place: ranking your portfolio of projects. Make a note of everything in your portfolio, then evaluate each based on its strategic value and urgency. A major aspect of project portfolio management is setting clear priorities, and to do that you’ll need an understanding of how vital each project is as well as when it needs to be done.
A project portfolio timeline
Once you’ve listed and ranked at the highest level, you’ll be able to create detailed project roadmaps and Gantt charts to visualize timelines, making multi-project management more intuitive and precise. Streamline planning by aligning schedules and dependencies across projects.
Allocate Resources Strategically
When you know what your projects are, when they need to be handled, and their relative importance, you’ll be able to allocate your pool of resources.
Distribute resources based on priority and project impact, ensuring that every initiative under managing multiple projects receives the attention it deserves.
A team bandwidth table
Plan for Contingencies
This is often saved for a “last step.” But pros know that planning for contingencies is actually one of the first things a project manager should do. Because when things go wrong – and they will! – it’s significantly easier to get a project back on track if you’ve already thought ahead. This importance compounds in project portfolio management, when one project off-track can cascade into multiple projects off-track.
Develop backup plans and risk assessments for high-priority projects to mitigate potential issues in your overall planning, and make a note of how likely different issues are to arise. Make sure your team is prepped with this knowledge, too.
You can loop in stakeholders to your backup plans without making them panic by being judicious about what information you share with them. Visor’s different access levels are a great way to provide a living snapshot of project progress to stakeholders without needing to show them every bit of behind the scenes information.
Sharing options in Visor
Leveraging Technology for your Project Portfolio
There’s no reason to plan your projects like you’re in the stone age. We live in the AI era – and great tech can help you do twice the work in half the time.
Embrace Integration
Real-time updates and insight are something you can only achieve with a bi-directional integration. These push and pull data from all the apps you use to work with your teams, ensuring your data is fresh and accurate at all times.
An Asana-integrated Gantt in Visor
Lean Into AI
AI features tend to be all flash and no substance these days – but that’s not true of every tool!
Visor uses ambient AI, which never invades your projects. Instead, it works quietly in the background to help you do your best work.
You can set up templates for the workbooks, charts, and project trackers you need using Visor’s AI – simply tell it what you want to create, enter some basic information, and in seconds you’ll have a ready-to-use custom template for your projects.
A Gantt chart in Visor
It frees up your time, your teams’ time, and helps you present your best work to your stakeholders.
Keep Your Tech Stack Fresh
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in managing multiple projects is letting your tech stack grow stale. You never want to end up using a subpar tool just because it’s there. Keep up to date with tech advancements to make sure that the tools you use are the best options.
Your goal is to use the tools that evolve with you and are designed for your size of team. Enterprise-level tech often leaves smaller teams in the dust. Opt for software that’s a perfect fit, and you’ll be more likely to get what you need from it.
Communication and Collaboration in Multi-Project Management
Clear, consistent communication with your teams and stakeholders can make or break any project – and when you have more than one project to take care of, it’s more important than ever.
Centralize Collaborative Planning
It’s impossible to manage one project without a single source of truth, let alone multiple. Make sure that you have one place where all your other apps integrate, so that you can keep track of what’s going on where. This should be the tool you use to report on progress and spot red flags.
Real-time collaboration and sharing is a must for a single source of truth, so that the information passes the infamous bus test.
Set Expectations Early
Clearly define roles, responsibilities, and communication protocols to streamline the flow of information and support effective management.
This goes for stakeholders, too – when managing expectations, you’ll need to set the bar where you want it by under-promising and over-delivering as much as possible.
Schedule regular team meetings and check-ins to maintain open lines of communication, and make sure everyone on every team knows their job.
How To Manage Every Project in Your Portfolio
Even when managing every project starts to feel overwhelming, these best practices and strategies will help you keep it all up in the air and running. Clear prioritization, great tech, and effective communication can help every project manager keep up with their full portfolio without ever breaking a sweat in front of stakeholders.
By implementing these strategies—and with Visor as your trusted partner—you can take control of your portfolio and drive your projects to success.
A multi-project dashboard in Visor
Ready to transform your project portfolio management approach? Try Visor now, free, and manage your full project portfolio with ease.
