Working With Multiple Projects

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the fractionation of a project into smaller slices. He explains that if the project is large you can divide it into phases when there is no dependency between them. He shows the advantages and disadvantages of managing multiple projects and cases in which this technique can be used.

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Episode transcript

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Speaker 1 (4s): Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes BM podcasts today. I like to discuss multiple projects and not with the approach of portfolio management, but much more in the program management approach in the tactical approach. So let's suppose I have a big, quite a big project that sometimes it's very hard to handle as a single effort as a one single babbler BS as one single project, Microsoft project file.

And then I want to split this into several project files and the handle once one at a time, or share this with different people. So there is one very good aspect of that. And there is one quite bad aspect to that. So let's think if I handle a big project as a single effort, I will be sure that all the links and all relationships and all conflicts are handled as a whole in a much more holistic approach.

When I spoke, I will lose this eye will lose because sometimes it will be very hard to see this relationship, but on the other hand is extremely better to handle a zoom small file. I use a small MPP file on a project instead of having a spreadsheet with something like 10,000 different risks, I will have the risks only for phase one, and I will handle this in a much more close approach.

So there is one good size in one bad site. So let's pray to help you make the best decision. What I will like to suggest is you first check the WBS, have your big, big project, Czech it and see it first, the size and second, the first group, the first level. And imagine, can I split this an easel later that phase from the orders, how many interactions this phase we will have during the phase development with the auto phase, if the interrelationship between, for example, phase one and phase two is extremely high, extremely then it's pointless.

There is no reason for splitting. It's much better to handle this as a whole, as it were only one piece. But then do you, your honour, here, if you can check and see, okay, there is only is more interactions between phase one and phase two before phase one finished. Most of the relationships inside phase one are among the tasks in phase one. Dan, it's quite reasonable to put phase one as an MPP file as one only one file.

And then you take phase two, do the same and phase three, do the same. And then you can consolidate this into a big project. Only this consolidate it's only to have the global view and to make the relationships that are not inside the phases. But if you have phase one in phase two and two will have something like 100 tasks is on phase one with relationships with 1000 tasks is in phase two.

It's pointless to split this. This will give you much more water to do than having this as one big file. So the reason that I'm recording this podcast is to help you to understand this check that your WBS WBS, everything, when we are thinking about planning and imagine, OK, if I split this, can I assign this way? Phase one is not known, no. If I split-phase one and I will need to interact something like 24 hours, time seven with phase two.

So it's much better to put this together. So like the risk management that the whole project has something like 1000 risks, and then you cannot assign risks to phase one. All the risks are interface related. So this risk, is phase one, two or three and four. Then it's pointless to split this. You split to a sign, proper responsibility. You split this to reduce and keep the focus on it, the first phases of the project.

But so Projects, who can not do that. Projects with a very strong, fast-tracking approach. You will need to handle this as a whole. Is that one piece, one big, big beet, one big piece. So this is a very important decision because I know, and I saw many people splitting Projects into many, many MPP files, but the air is completely interconnected, this will mess up your work. This will increase your work.

And also we will increase the hardware and software requests much more, easy to bring you trouble. That can cause problems. But in your hand, on some project, you can split this way easily, sharply, and make our work much more organized and easy to handle that's all for today. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and see you next week with another five minutes PM. Podcast bye. Bye.

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Ricardo Vargas

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