Ask Advice: working on multiple projects
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Things are challenging at work at the moment and it is making me question further whether my organisation system is fit for my job. Since the beginning of April I have gone from working on two closely related projects for the same manager to four different projects for different managers. This is proving difficult, especially as they are all urgent now.
My current system prioritises tasks based on deadline and priority level on a last in first out basis, however this does not take into account that I have to ensure I share my effort across the different projects. I also have different allowances for the amount of time I should spend on each project, so it is not as simple as just working on one task for each project in turn.
So, do any of you work on more than one project at a time in this way? What has worked for you? What tips would you suggest I try?
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Each project will be urgent to the individual manager, find out from someone perhaps above their tier to work out the priorities of each compared to the others. Alternatively determine this yourself and set realistic expectations of when the projects can be done and if any are time fixed (completion date can’t be moved).
In terms of traceability, use something simple like http://slimtimer.com/ or http://www.tickspot.com/index.html to track your time and also to give visibility of progress to the managers.
Use something like ACT! or Salesforce to keep track of your relationships and activities associated with those, see the PDF at http://itredux.com/2008/03/29/extreme-productivity-seminar-slides/
Also, http://www.pmi.org/eNews/Post/2008_04-25/Multi-ProjectResourceLevelingCanBeAJugglingAct.html
April 29th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Ian,
Thank you for your reply it is very interesting. Although some of my tasks have fixed deadlines the majority of them need to be completed on an ongoing basis, so my current approach is little and often to ensure they keep moving onwards.
I like the look of slimtimer and tickspot, I haven’t come across either of those webpages before. I currently use some software on my palm http://www.psync.com/PunchClock.shtml
April 30th, 2008 at 12:28 pm