Episode 167 – How To Manage Several Projects at Once

The podcast by project managers for project managers. Hear practical advice from Elizabeth Harrin on how to more effectively manage a significant project workload, and how to manage several projects at once. This episode is about saving time and working smarter! Table of Contents 02:07 … Meet Elizabeth03:44 … Inspiration for the Book06:56 … A Multi-Project Environment07:41 … Scheduling Challenges08:44 … Simplifying Scheduling10:55 … Managing Dependencies12:10 … Engaging Stakeholders13:46 … Sushi, Spaghetti, and Side Dish Workloads15:13 … 5 Major Concepts15:52 … Portfolio 18:39 … Planning19:32 … Kevin and Kyle21:03 … People Management23:39 … Time Limitations with Senior Execs25:45 … Better Connections27:01 … Productivity28:07 … Overcoming Procrastination28:57 … RAID31:31 … Positioning33:44 … The Five Email Rule34:44 … The Future of Project Management36:16 … Contact Elizabeth37:04 … Closing ELIZABETH HARRIN: ...And if we have organizations that support us, and the culture is there to understand the capacity for change, then we can fly.  We can do the things that our companies, our organizations need us to do because we do have the right skills to do it.  The challenge, the flipside of that is often we’re asked to do that without the resources, funding, and time to make it possible. WENDY GROUNDS:  Hi, and welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Thank you for joining us.  My name is Wendy Grounds, and in the studio with me is Bill Yates.  If you like what you hear, we’d love to hear from you.  You can leave us a comment on our website, Velociteach.com; on social media; whichever podcast-listening app you use.  If you have questions about our podcasts or about project management certifications, we’re always here for you. Today we’re talking to someone we’ve spoken to before, and she’s well known in the circles of project management.  This is Elizabeth Harrin.  She’s an author, speaker, and a mentor who helps people manage projects.  She has lots of straight-talking, real-world advice.  Elizabeth is an APM fellow and the author of seven books, and she’s on a mission to make sure you can deliver better quality projects with more confidence and less stress. BILL YATES:  In this episode we’re going to talk about Elizabeth’s latest book.  It’s called “Managing Multiple Projects.”  In that book she offers advice on ways you can more effectively manage your project workload.  If you’re like me, you typically had more than one project that you were managing at a time.  Elizabeth tackles that.  She gives great advice.  Every chapter ends with key takeaways and action steps.  Another thing I really appreciate about her writing style is she invites a lot of practitioners, project managers to give advice, share tips, share struggles.  You’ll see those interwoven throughout each chapter.  Great book, great resource.  I’m excited to talk with Elizabeth about it today. WENDY GROUNDS:  Elizabeth, it’s so good to have you back, virtually.  And welcome to Manage This. ELIZABETH HARRIN:  Thank you.  Thanks for having me back.  It’s great to be here talking to you today. Meet Elizabeth WENDY GROUNDS:  So I’ve read your book, and it is excellent, very helpful resource.  And I was also looking back at when we last talked to you, and it was sometime I think in 2018.  And I wasn’t even on the podcast yet.  I think it was right before I joined Manage This.  So it’s been a while.  What have you been up to in the last four years? ELIZABETH HARRIN:  That was quite a long time ago; wasn’t it.  So what I’ve been doing since then, well, I was leading projects until the autumn of 2019, so just before we went into the pandemic.  In the worst of the pandemic I stopped working in a corporate project management role, and I took a couple of years away from that to spend some time writing, including that book; teaching, mentoring, that kind of thing, doing some freelance work.