5 – Common Mistakes to Avoid While Managing Multiple Projects

Managing Multiple Projects: – All projects are different, but the problems encountered, are generally same  When you manage one project at a time, you can concentrate all your attention, energy and skills on achieving the goals and success, but in case of managing multiple projects, it seems little bit difficult. In a single project you are able to plan, prioritize your tasks, communicate with your team and manage risks. Below this post is all about showing the common mistakes while managing multiple projects.

Mistakes to Avoid While Managing Multiple Projects

However, things get complicated when you find yourself managing several projects at the same time. Your responsibility, your leadership and your skills are more solicited. You have to be everywhere at once and it is then easy to disperse and make mistakes. Rest assured, other project leaders have gone through this before you. Learn from their mistakes and master multi-project management.

1. Try to do everything yourself or Micromanager his team

You have the unfortunate tendency to trust only yourself to carry out the tasks. When you assign a mission to a collaborator, no matter how talented, you cannot help but send him regular emails to know the progress of the mission. Result: you are overwhelmed by events; you can no longer follow your schedule, or accomplish your tasks on schedule. In addition, your team is frustrated by your lack of confidence and de-motivation.

The solution: micromanagement kills your projects. To remedy this, you must learn how to delegate. Your team is your most powerful tool. Alone, you will not be able to finish your projects on time.

Delegating helps you reduce your daily tasks, allowing you to have more time to think about strategies and organize your priorities through your various projects. Finally, by delegating, your team will feel that you trust it. She will then find her motivation and work more so as not to disappoint you.

Caution, delegating does not mean letting go. You must guide your team and coordinate its actions. This is a win-win strategy.

2. Neglect project planning

In project management, the majority of errors come from lack of planning. If you do not plan your projects correctly or if you do not regularly update schedules, you cannot track and control the progress of your projects. You run the risk of losing time to catch up with mistakes, falling behind on tasks and exceeding your budget. In the end, all this will directly affect the delivery date of your projects. Neglecting planning will inevitably lead to failure.

The solution: Avoid directly attacking your projects without planning them beforehand. It is essential to know where you are going before you go.

Follow these three Essential tips:

• To ensure budget and deadline compliance, you must monitor the progress of each project on a daily basis and update your schedules as often as necessary, otherwise they are unnecessary.
• Your schedules must be flexible and allow for flexibility in case of unexpected events. This allows you to react quickly and avoid additional costs or delays.
• All information about your projects must be within reach and easily accessible to all project stakeholders. Thus, you are more effective in managing your projects.

3. Separate each Project Plan

If you use different tools and spaces to manage your projects, you are wasting time moving from one to the other, but most importantly, you never have an overall view. How then to avoid conflicts of delivery dates and resources? By managing each project separately, it becomes very difficult to organize the tasks and priorities of one project according to the others. You then spend your time running from one project to another looking for solutions to the problems and delays that are accumulating.

The solution: You need to have an eye on all the projects you manage simultaneously. Project management software allows you to group all your projects on the same platform. All the information you and your team need to be effective is available easily and in one place. Plan zone offers you multi-project management and allows you to monitor the progress of each phase of your projects, adjust their planning and manage resource allocations.

4. Do not communicate regularly with your teams

How do you want your teams to know what to do if you do not tell them clearly? Poor communication inevitably leads to misunderstandings and misunderstandings. This leads to errors that waste time and money. It can also be a source of stress because your employees do not know what you expect from them. All this has a negative impact on your projects.

The solution: communication is paramount, even more so when you manage multiple projects at the same time. You must communicate with your team and with the various stakeholders of the projects. It is essential to understand the needs and requirements of customers and to communicate them accurately to your employees. Without good communication, your projects are doomed to fail.

5. Avoid becoming the Project Assistant

You send dozens of emails a day, chain meetings, ask for reports and constantly remind your employees of the deadlines. In short, you feel like spending your time collecting and updating your project data. Even if administrative tasks are part of your mission, they should not take precedence over your other duties. Who directs and motivates your team during this time?

The solution: there are many reliable tools and software to simplify your work. Project management software is the ideal tool. Choose it carefully: it should make your life easier by automating routine tasks and not adding you extra actions. It must be simple and intuitive, tasks must be easily modifiable at all times and all your projects must be visible on the same platform (as specified in error 3).

To Summarize

Managing multiple projects at the same time is not easy. Avoid these 5 common mistakes with the proposed solutions and become an effective project manager.