Whether you’re managing an in-person or remote workforce, it can be hard to keep track of all your team’s projects. And if you’re struggling, just imagine how difficult it must be for your employees. To solve your problems, you’ll need to find a system that manages their workload.
How to Successfully Manage Multiple Projects
Good project management is necessary for any team tackling large, multi-faceted initiatives. To keep track of your progress, manage your budget, and support your staff, try the following.
1. Opt for One Dashboard for Complete Visibility
If you’re struggling with a lack of visibility across your projects, you’ll need to use a single dashboard to manage them all. Planning and managing your launches in one place lets you see how many projects you have, what items they include, and the status of your project roadmap.
2. Define Project Goals, Responsibilities, and Plans
You need to define project goals, make a plan, assign responsibilities, and set expectations if you want to do away with inconsistencies. Any project goal you set should help your team finish the project to your specifications, but don’t forget to pencil in time for feedback and approvals.
3. Prioritise Projects That Make the Most Impact
While it’s tempting to work on the smallest or easiest projects first, try to resist the temptation. It’s better if you prioritise projects based on their impact on your company goals. When you plan to delegate work, determine which project will lead to better customer retention and start there.
4. Provide Specialist Industry-Specific Software
Depending on your industry, a generic dashboard may not be enough. For example, commercial real estate teams should use real estate development software found on northspyre.com. With this tool, development teams can make more predictable outcomes on all of their projects.
5. Empower Your Team to be Flexible and Adaptable
Project scope, priorities, and deliverables can change at any time, but your team needs to keep track of them, so they can pivot and reassign work. Use a single communication channel (it can be the same tool as your project dashboard) to deliver information to your entire project team.
6. Set and Manage Your Expectations Clearly
Your team will become confused and disorganised when they’re expected to follow multiple managers who have misaligned expectations. Employers should use a tool that allows them to send real-time status and progress updates with a click, like work management software.
7. Balance Workloads and Timelines Across Projects
When you don’t know how much (or how little) someone has on their plate, you’ll cause an imbalance. You should know who’s doing what, who’s overbooked, and what’s causing project timeline conflicts. That way, you can quickly defer, remove, or re-delegate tasks instantly.
8. Adjust Project Schedules to Maximize Efficiency
Project start and end dates must be coordinated, or employees become overworked, and the project gets delayed. Team leads should stagger start dates for similar projects, look out for deliverables that are dependent on another task, and flag duplicate tasks (to consolidate them).
9. Delegate Appropriately Instead of Micromanaging
Micromanaging is ineffective, costly, and a waste of time. Instead of keeping a watchful eye on your staff, trust that they’ll finish projects on time. If you don’t trust them to hand in deliverables, consider retraining them, putting them on another project/task, or speaking to them privately.
10. Track and Safe Workflows Instead of Rebuilding Them
After finishing a major project, create a template you can use to replicate your process. Don’t keep rebuilding your workflow from the ground up. With that said, you should update your template regularly with new steps and tasks you’ve added to your process or workflow.
