Managing multiple projects with MS project

As a project manager in today's busy and stressful world, there is rarely the opportunity to focus all your energies on just one project. Managing multiple projects is viewed as a way of increasing efficiency and productivity within organizations and the responsibility does not only fall on the shoulders of department heads.

There is no rule as to how many projects a project manager should manage at one time as each project tends to differ in terms of its size and complexity. It is, however, important that a project manager has a strategy for dealing with multiple projects. Prioritization of tasks is very important when there is a high workload. Good planning in the early stages of a project is important as the setting of deadlines should take into account other company commitments. Teamwork is also very important as the project manager can delegate tasks to colleagues and thereby still retain overall control of the project.

In addition to using prioritization, planning and delegation skills, MS Project training can prove extremely valuable because an individual is able to unleash the full potential of the software. MS project training focusing on the management of multiple projects can help a project manager to calmly deal with their workload and ultimately, increase their chances of success in the workplace.

Several features are available from MS Project to assist in dealing with multiple projects.

Option to Consolidate Projects

When it comes to organizing large and complex projects, consolidation of projects can prove extremely useful. Essentially, this refers to the insertion of smaller projects into a master project. The smaller projects become summary tasks within the consolidated project. The advantage of this strategy is that the project manager gains increased control of projects with lots of tasks. This is because the master project becomes more manageable in terms of size. A common resource pool is however, required for the resources to be utilized across several subprojects.

Ability to Share Resources

A shared resource pool as the name implies holds all resource information in a central location. As a result, it is easier to assign people and equipment to tasks in more than one project file. Without a shared resource pool, there is a risk that resources assigned to different projects may overlap and result in resource over allocation.

Managing multiple projects presents some unique challenges for a busy project manager. In summary, when it comes to dealing with multiple projects, ms+project+training = expert project management!