Book By: Elizabeth Harrin
Reviewed by: Russell Parker
Publisher: Kogan Page
Pages: 240
Edition: 1st Edition
Who Should Read This Book?
All Project Managers need to read this book.
We are living in a fast-paced society. More and more companies want to see more, and they want to see it now! Therefore, project managers are faced with juggling a heavier and hearvier workload to meet the demands of their leadership.
I’m not here today to debate the good or bad behind this. Today, we are here to review Elizabeth Harrin’s book, “Managing Multiple Projects, ” which focuses on coaching project managers to handle multiple projects simultaneously.
If you are new to project management or early in your career, you must pick up this book. Its concepts will help you with your projects and prepare you for when you are assigned multiple projects.
If you are a senior and have been around project management for a few minutes, you, too, will find value in this book. Especially if you’re getting ready to go into program or portfolio management.
If you plan to make a career in project management, you will manage multiple projects simultaneously at some point. So, if you get ahead of all the stress, schedule delays missed deadlines, and even the possibility of a failed product launch. You need to pick up this book!
Overview of Key Topics
This book is 240 pages long with 7 chapters, including the forward, preface, acknowledgment, and introduction.
Elizabeth does a great job within the book to set the stage in chapters 1 and 2 with a “Quick Start Guide” and explain “Why Managing Multiple Projects is Different” from managing just one.
Each chapter of the book discusses a key topic in Managing Multiple Projects:
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Concept 1 – Portfolio: Understanding Your Workload
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Concept 2 – Plan: Combining Project Schedules
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Concept 3 – People: Engaging Stakeholders Across Projects
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Concept 4 – Productivity: Managing Your Own Time
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Concept 5 – Positioning: Setting Up the Environment for Success
Concept 1 - Portfolio: Understanding Your Workload
As the concept is titled, this chapter of the book focuses on how you manage multiple projects within your portfolio.
First, she defines a portfolio and gives a great template for workload tracking across all your projects. She gives detailed examples of how to use this spreadsheet and the mentality behind using it.
Moving from the definition, Elizabeth goes into prioritizing work across the portfolio. Her primary focus is on the methods of:
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The Eisenhower Matrix
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MoSCoW (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Would Like to Have)
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ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease)
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COST (Compliance, Operations, Strategic, and Tactical)
Being able to prioritize work and communicate the prioritized tasks is critical for all project managers. To manage multiple projects, you must have a priority system, allowing you to focus on the critical work first without letting ancillary tasks impact your momentum.
Then, she moves on to how many priority projects are too many. The ultimate question that haunts project managers. Everything seems to be a priority, but as Frank Sonnenberg mentioned, everything cannot be a priority.
Lastly, she describes how to work in groups to make your to-do lists less intimidating. She describes how to combine tasks by:
Stakeholders
Theme or Content
Location
Lifecycle Stage
Project Management Approach
Amount of Active Management
Deadline
Software
Concept 2 - Plan, Combining Project Schedules
When planning a project, we all know that you live and die by your schedule. Traditional or Agile, you must plan and when you have manage multiple projects, the complexity in planning increases substationaly.
Elizabeth describes this process by starting with a single requirement for combining project schedules, ensure that each project already has a schedule. You cannot combine what is not already there.
You must look at dependencies across these schedules. Looking for the four different project dependencies:
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Resource
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Knowledge
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Task
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Deliverable
Once you know your dependencies, she shows you how to document these dependencies in a matrix. You then use the matrix to build out the next step in consolidating your schedule.
With a combined schedule, you can start focusing on the big-picture events that create busy times (overlapping critical points). It also allows you to plan where you will spend your time and where you will allocate your team’s time.
Concept 3 - People: Engaging Stakeholders Across Projects
Managing stakeholders and a sponsor for one project can be a chore. Managing multiple stakeholders and sponsors across all your work creates a level of communication complexity that no one wants to deal with.
That’s why Elizabeth explains how to effectively engage the stakeholders and sponsors from your several projects without missing the mark. And to do this, it all starts with a plan.
By the time you get out of the planning phase, you will have a stakeholder management plan that lists out all your stakeholders. When managing multiple projects, she explains the need to up this to a stakeholder database. This database is the base for your stakeholder map.
The stakeholder’s map lets you see the stakeholders, and possibly even sponsors you have, that stretch across projects. You will want to know this information since you might not always get the conversations you want when dealing with stakeholders.
To understand why you will not always get what you want, Elizabeth takes you through how to prioritize your stakeholders.
Her recommended model is the saliency model for stakeholders, measuring power, legitimacy, and urgency; she explains the eight stakeholder types:
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Definitive
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Dominant
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Dangerous
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Dependent
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Dormant
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Discretionary
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Demanding
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Non-Stakeholder
With this data, you are able to determine the level of communication needed for each stakeholder and the reporting requirements across your multiple projects.
Understanding your stakeholders allows you to build out consolidated reports that meet the needs of multiple stakeholders across all of your different projects. And it helps with ensuring that every stakeholder gets the information they need based on their level of power, legitimacy, and urgency.
Concept 4 - Productivity: Managing Your Own Time
This chapter addresses three things all of us face. Whether you are working on one project with multiple work streams or managing multiple projects, you will face three saboteurs:
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Procrastination
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Disorganization
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Poor Planning
Elizabeth does more than explain these issues, but discusses ways to mitigate them. She explains the four D’s of mitigation:
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Delegate
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Delete
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Defer
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Do
And she discusses TIS (Task, Interest, Skill), a concept that allows you to ask three questions about yourself:
What is the Task?
What is your level of Interest?
How skilled are you at doing the Task?
By asking these questions, you can determine if you are a:
Occupant: Low Interest/Low Skill
Enthusiast: High Interest/Low Skill
Expert: Low Interest/High Skill
Pro: High Interest/High Skill
She moves into planning your time to do your work. This has become a huge issue in a world full of virtual calls. Elizabeth discusses that for managing multiple projects, your time to do your work is necessary. And she discusses multiple ways to get this done.
She offers multiple techniques to address time issues, from planning transition time to avoiding gold plating. Moving straight into improving your focus on the top of your time, this chapter provides multiple techniques everyone needs to manage their time and be more productive with their time.
Concept 5 - Positioning: Setting Up the Environment for Success
All Project Managers need to read this book.
We are living in a fast-paced society. More and more companies want to see more and they want to see it now! Therefore, project managers are faced with juggling multiple projects to meet the demand of their leadership.
I’m not here today to debate the good or bad behind this. Today, we are here to review Elizabeth Harrin’s book, “Managing Multiple Projects” – A book that focuses on coaching project managers to handle multiple projects.
If you are new to project management or early in your career, you need to pick up this book. It’s concepts will help you with your projects and prepare you for when you are assigned those multiple projects.
If you are senior and been around project management for a minute (or two), you too will find value in this book. This is especially needed if you are getting ready to go into program or portfolio management.
What I Enjoyed About The Book:
Main Area Managing Multiple Projects is an easy read with detailed yet succinct information. Ensure you have tabs next to you while reading it because you will want to bookmark sections for future reviews.
I enjoyed the book’s flow and how she presented all the information. Using the “Key Takeaways” and Action Steps” at the end of each chapter provides a great review.
The descriptions of the resources she uses in the book are not complex spreadsheets. Instead, they are simple concepts even a novice Excel or Sheets user could build. And if you don’t want to build them yourself, she provides downloaded resources HERE on her website.
I highly recommend this book to all project managers out there. If you want to succeed in this profession, you must know how to manage their workload without burning yourself out. And if you want a quick way to know how to avoid burnout, read this book!
Elizabeth’s book provides all the necessary resources you need to succeed. You just need to take the time to read, take some notes, and apply the concepts – and you’ll be managing your calendar all those meetings and status reports like a pro in no time.
What I Didn’t Enjoy About The Book:
This was a hard question to answer while reading the book. It really met the marks for clarity, relevance, and readability.
If I had to get picky, though.
I would have liked a few more pictures and examples of some of the resources within the book. It would help visualize some of the points, especially if I didn’t already have a background or knowledge in each of the less-known areas.
Overall Rating:
About the Author
Elizabeth Harrin
Summary from Elizabeth’s website: Elizabeth-Harrin.com
Elizabeth is a Speaker, Author, APM Fellow, Parent, Cat-Owner, and Bookworm.
She’s been in project management for 20+ years while also being a trainer, consultant, and writer. Starting her first blog as GirlsGuideToPM.com, she migrated to the well-known Rebel’s Guide to Project Management.
Elizabeth has done various talking engagements, contributes to publications, and finds time to trainer project managers in technology.
Elizabeth’s a well-rounded project manager. She focuses on bettering new project managers., which is seen below with all the books she’s written.
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Link to Author Website:
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Thank you for checking out this book review for: Managing Multiple Projects by Elizabeth Harrin
I highly recommend you pick up this book, take notes, and apply the concepts in your life as a project manager. I know I picked up a few good practices that I easily put into action while still reading the book. And I know you can too!
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