Signs it’s time to cut back the number of active projects

by Nicki Carruth | Apr 19, 2022 | Portfolio Assurance

Ever heard the phrase ‘too much of a good thing?’. Even the most sophisticated, streamlined large enterprises can reach a point at which there are too many business initiatives running in parallel.

Projects required time, space and attention to be really successful. A project doesn’t just involve the team actively working on it, but needs contribution by stakeholders for sign off and peripheral buy-in staff-wide, some of whom may need to adhere to a change brought about by the project.

There’s a few tell-tale signs of a business trying to do too much at once. In this article we’ll talk about a few of these and why prioritising your projects is critical for the success of each of them.

How many projects is ‘too many’?

Smaller businesses can’t cope with the resource, time and money drain of too many projects. In fact, SMEs might be best to run only 1-2 reasonably sized projects at once, or do what we often suggest to all sizes of business and break each project into smaller pieces. And for large organisations with thousands of employees, there’s obviously more bandwidth to accomodate more projects, provided the parts of the business impacted don’t deal with more than a few projects at once. So in essence, large organisations should consider their business units as small businesses with regards to their readiness for the impacts of active projects running.

Without doing this, the same department of your business can suffer from project ‘fatigue’, where the projects that have an impact on their work start to become confusing and muddled. BAU staff inevitably have interaction with a project, even if it’s as the recipient of comms and eventually a tangible business change. Some may be pulled into a project for meetings or even for some work. Imagine then, the same people being pulled in 5 different directions on top of their regular work. It’s a quick way to disengage a key audience – your staff.

Too many projects can also put strain on the finances of the business. Keeping many plates spinning at once can cost, especially if there are unforeseen circumstances that demand more budget for one or more projects within the portfolio. When businesses try to juggle too many projects, there’s little wriggle room for reactive budget allocation.

There’s also the matter of how many initiatives a senior leadership team can adequately stay across on top of their other operating functions. No one executive level role should be worrying about more than a few key programmes at one time, nor should programme directors have to deal with more than a few projects.

Approaching the conversation of project prioritisation

Prioritising projects is often difficult for leadership teams, especially when they also need to consider projects that are already in-flight. Ideally, prioritisation happens preemptively and during strategic planning, so the lower priority projects don’t even enter the delivery phase.

The conversation of prioritisation needs to be had with the anchoring points of the annual, 2 year, 5 year strategies to hand. When prioritisation references the business’ objectives and not the agendas or goals of the individual, decisions can be made easier, faster.

Prioritising a project doesn’t simply come from the business strategy however. Discussion and consultation with the business, and guidance from external parties in some cases (like us), helps to equip a leadership team with more data points on which to reshuffle the project portfolio. Sometimes a project may not seem as high up in the list of strategic imperatives, but actually has a clear, quick path to completion based on the business’ current status. Some technology based projects like system updates or establishing a new tool might not be the biggest move forward, but the roll out could be fairly straightforward.

Sometimes business’ prioritisation of projects may be done as a precursor to splitting up projects into smaller ones. This brings more confidence to the business of certain deliverables’ ability to be completed. By breaking up projects into smaller pieces, the most pressing strategic objectives can progress, without derailing all others.

In our work with our clients, we make sure not to rush the process of developing a good project portfolio. It’s not one meeting where this is determined, but a series of discussions, information gathering and data-led decision making.

Signs you have too many projects on the go

So, what are the tell-tale signs we speak of? The short answer is that there’s dozens of possible red flags. But for this article we’ll cover some of the more common of these:

Budget is continually being reallocated and stretched across multiple initiatives

The more projects that are active at one time, the further capital expenditure needs to go. If there are too many projects on the go, each may struggle to get sufficient budget to deliver, particularly if there are unforeseen events that require additional resource, scope changes or rework. When the wriggle room is only enabled through robbing Peter to pay Paul, all projects will suffer as a result.

None of the milestones seem to be getting hit on time

More active projects running simultaneously can increase the chances of delays as resources become stretched. And it’s not just the budget being spread thin that slows things down; more projects means more time required from already busy stakeholders, programme managers, and operational staff. If you notice a trend across the board of milestones that are late, it could be a sign that you’re putting too much pressure on the organisation to deliver.

Quality of delivery is dropping

You may also start to see more evidence for the project delivery quality decreasing. While project team members may still be the best people for the job, if they are forced to work within unrealistic time frames or budgets, the outputs will suffer as they’re forced to improvise.

The same stakeholders are getting pulled in multiple directions

Pressure on stakeholders doesn’t lead to a whole lot of positive outcomes for a project. First, stakeholders that have sign off responsibilities will have a baseline level of pressure on them to ensure the project deliverable has met the business’ needs. If it doesn’t they’ll be one of the groups that need to work through solutions. As you can appreciate this causes many stakeholders to take their time to approve anything until they are confident. Now put that same demand on the stakeholder for three other projects at the same time, and ask them to continue leading their business unit or carry out their daily responsibilities as well. This will stall projects and may be a sign that there’s too many projects on the go..

Leadership teams don’t have time to focus on every initiative

A leadership team agenda often feels too short. Not every project needs discussion at that level, but if there are enough programmes or projects that span different parts of the business, they will likely demand some air time. And it’s not just in meetings that leadership teams need to think about programmes and projects. They’ll need to digest reports, provide sign off for scope changes, and meet with key personnel in the business to ensure these are running properly.

The same team members are getting dragged into multiple projects at once

Project teams are usually assembled to own the bulk of delivery, but these teams require input from the rest of the business who need to implement the project’s outputs. It’s also common for organisations to tap into existing staff for help on a project as this reduces the additional cost of new outside resources. It’s possible that some key staff (particularly key subject matter experts) are in demand on more than one project. This is okay once in a while, but if it becomes the norm and day to day operations suffer, there’s an issue.

Staff simply stop trying to keep up with all the projects and lose interest

Projects eventually become part of BAU if executed properly. Part of onboarding the business to change is by getting staff buy-in at the beginning and throughout the project’s lifespan. The comms challenge can be significant if there are many initiatives each having different key messages. Any internal comms person will tell you that overloading people with information is a quick way of getting them to tune out. A litmus test is asking staff about specific initiatives – if they don’t know anything about them and they should, perhaps they’ve lost the ability to keep up.

What are the business’ strategic priorities? Start here first

If you’re concerned that there are too many projects or programmes in your organisation, the best place to regain your bearings is the business strategy. What are the priorities? Dedicating time and effort to reference the existing portfolio against the key objectives will help you determine what’s critical and what can be pushed out for a later date.

Get help prioritising projects and get things back on track

Having independent assurance and advice around a reprioritisation of your projects can be tremendously beneficial to organisations, especially those where there are many opposing views on which projects should remain priority.

IQANZ brings completely independent, objective advice to businesses. We use the available information about your business goals and the status of each project to determine which projects are the most important to keep in your active portfolio.

Our team has a lot of experience and draws upon proven quality assurance methodologies to help clients refine and plan their projects within a portfolio that makes good outcomes more likely.

Chat to our team to discover IQANZ’ portfolio assurance service.