Frank Patrick

PM Post: It’s what you finish; not how much you start

[This is the last in a series on Multi-Project Management and Organizational Effectiveness. Start at Part 1: Organizations are multi-project systems]

Too many organizations act as if by packing the pipeline and keeping everyone heavily loaded with work, a combination of filled queues and busy resources will result in rapid and reliable project completions. Instead, projects bump into one another, adding delays usually unanticipated in individual project promises, and resources burn out jumping between unfinished tasks that then further delay task handoffs and project completions.

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PM Post: Organizational effectiveness is resource effectiveness

[Part 2 of a series in Multi-Project Management and Organizational Effectiveness. If you haven’t already read Part Organizations are multi-project systems.]

The old saw defining efficiency largely as doing things right and effectiveness as doing the right things definitely applies to multi-project systems. How individual tasks are defined and delivered are key to the efficient completion of individual projects. And choosing the “right projects” from the portfolio of possibilities is clearly related to the contribution of the efforts to the organization’s success. While these single-project and portfolio management concerns are beyond the scope of this chapter, strategies for managing the interaction of various active projects as they vie for the attention of the limited resources are not.

Understanding the importance of getting the right things done at the task level, and behaving accordingly are significant contributors to efficiency as well and are the basis for multi-project resource (organizational) effectiveness. Unfortunately, too many organizations overlook this and instead emphasize control of costs to the detriment of what they are trying to accomplish. 

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