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Great idea, Frank.
It just hit me that one way to find out what this looks like is to pose it like the series of jokes "You might be a redneck if..." and you fill in the blank with things like "...you need a pair of pliers to change the channel on your TV" or "... your home is mobile but your car is not."
So, "You might have too many projects if..."
---"...you can't describe in 30 seconds the purpose of each."
---"...you are surprised more than once a week by project developments."
---"...you cancel weekly update meetings becuase you are overloaded."
---"...you dread going to work on Monday because of the chaos."
---"...you have made more than one excuse for a late delivery this week."
Just an idea. Looking forward to others' views, Frank!
Joe
Brilliant!
In my limited experience, I have observed that most PMs and project team members know when they are overloaded. It's generally the senior executives that do not receive enough feedback to know that the pipeline is full. I'd like to take the series of jokes and tweak it to meet their perspective.
Doug
Good point. And, Doug, I would add that most PMs who do know they are overloaded are very reluctant to admit same to a senior manager who doesn't want to hear it.
Which only exacerbates the problem, because if the PM can't have that difficult conversation with her boss, then how can she expect to have difficult conversations with the folks on her project team about getting the project done? By example, the problem snowballs.
There has to be some indicators that can help here.
Isn't the previous article on multi-tasking one clue to having too many projects? Or is it one clue in a larger puzzle of why people take on too much work and end up surprised that it can't be done? [This could be worded better. Multitasking is both a symptom and a cause.]
I'm more conviced more than ever that the answer is a PM should never have more than one project in process at any given time. There is so much going on with a single project that it demands full attention. Unfortunately, managers of PMs think that it's not because that's how they worked projects. In the high tech world, people are expected to multi-task because people can reprioritize better than machines on the fly. This is true, but what is often ignored is the amount of waste associated with setup time for knowledgeworker or developers new product development projects.
It comes down to managers that don't know enough details to manage several projects in their portfolio so they assign them to their PMs and let them do all of the work. 
I'd still like to quantify the "it depends" answer. I find that I can manage several projects if:
- I'm the only one on the project 
- some of the projects have technical leads who keep people going
- people have defined their tasks as inch-pebbles
I'm sure there's more, but I'd like to explore this a bit. Maybe I'll blog about it too.
Inch-Pepples - what a great way to describe a small 1 to 2 day tasks that is either done or not. If management took the time to work with the development team to define tasks like this, it would certainly help keep track of a project easier. In a way, this is how the Agile process called Scrum helps keep a project moving forward by defining what you want to get done in a month through story points that are relatively small in scope.
With this process, a PM can manage several Scrums because at the end of the month, you know exactly what's done or not.
You can't define how many projects are too many, partly because it varies depending upon the stresses that the PM is under.
What you can (and IMO must) do is plan for when this WILL happen.
Partly this consists of ensuring that the PM and their boss can communicate openly with each other - mainly so the PM can push back when they feel they have too much work on.
But I've found that the more important task is to ensure that the PM knows when they have a project under control and when they don't.
Discipline is what counts here. They should have a daily discipline they follow that ensures they know where each project is at. This should be something that is done every day, regardless of whether they feel they know where they are at. The biggest problems occur when you they get slack for a while, because the workload is light, but then suddenly find themselves with a huge amount of extra work, and their previous projects haven't been kept on top of properly.
If you have this sort of system in place, then a good rule of thumb to know when they have too many projects, is when they don't get around to doing that daily discipline.
Another point worth considering is that (in my case) the things that make put me under stress as a PM are not usually managing projects, but are other tasks.
My skills as a PM are under more stress when I am a key resource for one of my projects than at any other time. I find I lose sight of the forest because of the trees. That is always harder than managing almost any number of projects.
One would think that the signs of being over-tasked would be obvious:
- You schedule weeknight meetings after 5.00p.
- Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays are spent at the office or on the VPN.
- Vacation plans are continually postponed or canceled.
- Personal commitments come with a “tentative” provisos.
- You haven’t seen the kids in three days.
- Home repair projects continue to pile up (e.g.: your HOA sends a 2nd notice that your lawn requires mowing).
- Friends give up trying to call or correspond with you. Clients are the only ones leaving messages on your personal phone.
- You can finish this statement, “If you want something done right …”
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