How To Handle Multiple Projects At A Time?

In multinational companies or big organizations, there is a professional person to handle projects of the company, i.e. project manager. But what if the organization is small or maybe just freelancers like us?

We have just finished our four sites by one after one, their lot of the things we learned about managing the projects, sometimes situations were positive or vise-versa but the main thing is now we have our lesson learned to improve further. We got used to our unpredictable schedule days such as we started our day with one project site visit, then somewhere selection of the materials, then afternoon spend on another site visit & after that day ended with unexpected or unplanned meetings of another project.

If that describes you, here are some ideas to help you properly organize and handle several projects. These eight tips have helped us and we are confident that they will help you as well.

1. Make A Plan Before Starting Anything 

This is a necessary point in respect of managing multiple projects & their n number of tasks. Before starting any project make a proper plan or schedule for it. Your planning depends on the project timeline & its work in progress. You can schedule all the tasks according to planning like when will be the project has to be delivered? what if two or more projects finishing times will same? How work should be distributed? If you are a single person who will play the entire game alone then how it will work? There are several tasks that have to be considered while planning & it should be starting of anything related to projects. 

2. Organization  

Stay organized all the time, keep all the things in a loop that maybe project meetings, their reviews, updated changes of the project, cost, bill & payments documentation & so on & so forth. Note everything in detail & organized it with the help of using processes, systems, frameworks, and software it ensures that you can always locate documentation and plans relevant to a specific project or client. Make sure you have quick access to project schedules and To-Do lists for your tasks. 

3. Manage Your Time

Manage your time in such a way that you must block it. You can monitor your time using several time management strategies. If you will be juggling many projects, it is clear that you will need to be a multitasker and complete several tasks in a day, which will be possible if your daily schedule is well managed. This schedule should be a reflection of project requirements & management points of view. 

4. Prioritize Your Tasks  

Always prioritize your task according to project requirements & priorities. Without knowing what is a priority for a particular project or for that particular time, in the end, you will get in the trouble of completing an unknowing task.

Task priority always depends on the projects, their budgets, timelines & many things & if you know all the things so you can prioritize all the tasks for you or your team so further there will be no chaos.  

5. Communication

Communication is the key to successfully completing any project. It means you should communicate with your client, your team, vendors & contractors regularly. This will help you to stay alive in the project while handling multiple projects. Proper communication will guide you to take fast & healthy decisions, to do project management & time management.

6. Always Be Flexible 

Keep in mind that you have to be flexible in the work point of view, there is no guess that when should you have to do several important activities at a time. Assume you have set a time today to work on Project A, an emergency arises on Project B and you’re called to deal with that. At that time a flexible attitude goes a long way to helping you to deal with this kind of multitasking project management situation.                                                                                                                                        

7. Set Targets

Whatever task you will be prioritizing or lining up the particular task you should target it, that when & how it should be completed? These targets can be daily, weekly, monthly but with a proper deadline, setting up goals or targets encourages you & your team to do better work & it will not only beneficial to you but also the complete organization.

8. Manage Expectations

Last but not the least, manage expectations. This is essential to manage the expectation of everyone who is involved in the project. Always stay updated on the communication point of view, let the people know that when & how you will be complete the project so that they can know what to expect at all the time & there will be no mess at the end. But by any chance, there will be a situation where you have not to complete a particular task then, let the people know about all the situation it will help you to build trust & powerful communication.

This is our experience while initial multiple project handling, we will hope that these tips will help you to consider each detail that will be essential to manage & complete any project.  Do let us know if you have gone through the same challenges in your projects. Comment down below, it will help us to grow by sharing the experience.