Advanced Multi-Project Management: Achieving Outstanding Speed and Results with Predictability
updated 4mo ago
updated 4mo ago
A plan must be made before the situation becomes critical. If the situation changes to critical, the plan is activated.
Implement and sustain the project freeze until after synchronization. Resources that had been assigned to the frozen projects are now available to speed up completion of the remaining projects.
When actual resources are fully loaded (i.e., around 67%) for three or more weeks, we call those resources overloaded—there is little or no opportunity to accommodate variability by shifting chunks of work from one week to another. When overloads/projected overloads are indicated for weeks, we are no longer in the world of occasional common cause v
... See moreThis means that most projects and tasks are not in a red zone, and project goals can be achieved without excessive expediting.
Daily fast-track issue resolution. This process, normally run by a member of the senior management team, is a daily meeting with project managers to identify and resolve blocking issues
Once again, we find that the time spent waiting for project work to get done far exceeds the actual task time.
Frequent priority changes. If resources must be frequently moved or pulled off tasks that have already been started, it is a sign that the entire system is out of control.
The synchronizer is either a heavily loaded critical resource or a type of work/phase of a project that we use to perform the synchronization of projects to the organization’s capacity.
“How do I make sure that no other infrastructure work will be absolutely necessary over the next year, so that we can really focus our time and attention as a company on the things that will deliver our profit goals?”
See Rob Newbold, Project Management in the Fast Lane (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1998); Billion Dollar Solution (Lake Ridge, VA: ProChain Solutions, Inc., 2008); and Andreas Scherer, Be Fast or Be Gone (Lake Ridge, VA: ProChain Solutions, Inc., 2001).