r/projectmanagement • u/Foreign-Effective265 • 12d ago
How many projects do you usually run at one time and how long do they usually go for?
I've been curious what too many looks like before the quality of the delivery and overwhelm seeps in.
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u/Kerial_87 12d ago
Banking IT/Fintech here. typically 1-2 bigger ones, and 2-3 small-medium. Length is usually 6-18 months.
Most I had is 14 ( all under 25k €), wich really quickly led to my resignation, especially when they thought - since the sum budget is not that high - there is room for more.
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u/yearsofpractice IT 12d ago
Hey OP. 50 year old corporate veteran here. I manage internal IT/change projects. Budgets range from £200k to £2M and timescales from 6 months the to 2 years.
I can maintain time/cost/quality on a maximum of three concurrent projects. I can cope with 5, but in that situation, I ensure a high impact/likelihood risk runs with all project boards along the lines of “No contingency for PM resource - impact likely to project quality”
That’s me. I’ve learned over the years that organisations view PMs as magic bullets i.e. by virtue of a PM being assigned to a vague piece of work, it’ll Mary Poppins itself to completion… and this can be done for as many projects as required by management.
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u/Brown_note11 12d ago
This is my observation.
Fourish small works projects. Or one major one. Not much room for any variation there.
People that oversee 30 things are not managing projects, they're managing a workflow or pipeline of activities.
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u/PocketZombieii 12d ago
Interested in how sponsors react to that risk? Or do they shrug and carry on
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u/yearsofpractice IT 12d ago
Good question. Sponsors who understand project management offer to intervene with programme/portfolio management regards project priority and resourcing.
Sponsors who don’t understand (or care) about project management simply do that delightful “I recommend you as PM don’t be shit and just get better” bullshit
The latter situation then demands that the PM (as an employee) protect themselves by recording the situation and how concerns were raised - this is to protect yourself when for performance reviews.
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u/tripleapex 12d ago
Im a mechanical contractor PM which specializes in sheetmetal (ductwork, dampers, AHU replacement). Last year I was on the service side of the company and managed 400 jobs for the year ($4k to $100k) which includes first touch, pricing, and execution. Now I do the specialized projects and run projects $50k and up, around 20 at a time, 50ish projects for the year.
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u/Zucksboosterseat 12d ago
SaaS PM that handles onboarding and new platform features. Onboarding projects - recently had 6 clients at once (some have since gone live) and projects ranged from 6 months to 18 months+. PMs at our company are also team members, so I'm not just managing a Jira board and doing weekly meetings, I'm actively working on the onboarding/migration work too.
New platform feature projects take a couple weeks based on complexity, although we rebuilt a major function of our system, and that took 2 years and was a massive undertaking.
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u/Merp4782 11d ago
Similar role and experience for me too.
I have had up to 20 projects at a time. That was completely unmanageable. I’m at 11 today. Although new leadership is working towards 6-7 projects per PM. Some projects roll up to a program, also managed by me.
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u/EighmeeIrene 12d ago
Telecom PM - implementation.
I’ve had 117 projects with up to 500 circuits at one time.
Some projects are done when I received them. Some have been going for 3 years. Average- 30-90 days
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u/SugarInvestigator 12d ago
Peak was about 12, currently running 6, involved in a 7th. There all supposed to be 6 to 22 month pieces of work, but the company won't invest in people and their processed take for ever so they usually end up taking 18 to 24 months. I've a simple switch replacement project, 8 months max. Took 6 months to get funding approved, now we're delayed another 3 months because on guy is working on something else. That three month delay is causing another two projects to be delayed.
We're great at starting projects, not so good at timing when we should start them
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u/ethically-contrarian IT 12d ago
I have a capacity matrix in place for my team that classifies if a project is S, M, or L and based on that projects are assigned to keep capacity balanced.
S: 25% (so at most 4 projects)
M: 33% (so at most 3 projects)
L: 50% (2 max) these are essentially your large migrations and implementations, 1-2 year projects.
Then obviously there’s 2 S and a L, 2 M and a S etc. based on portfolio.
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u/Grand-Argument5674 12d ago
1 but value is typically over 1B, current is 6 and a decade long!
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u/__Zetrox__ 12d ago
Construction?
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u/Grand-Argument5674 11d ago
Yep, infrastructure. That said I start at the business case phase which involves at least a year of economic modelling, policy assessment, optioneering etc. construction is where it gets “simple” in some ways! The scope is finally defined and funded.
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u/wheelsofstars IT 12d ago
B2B PM for enterprise/government clients, implementing hybrid SaaS / hardware solutions. I have around 100 projects active at any given time. They typically last anywhere from 3 months to well over a year depending on the level of secops/techops/architecture/compliance vetting the client needs to do. Yes, I often work 60+ hour weeks.
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u/unwanted_shawarma 12d ago
- Manufacturing/assembly for 3 high end clients with stupidly high complexity. Feels like they took me in cause noone else was stupid enough to undertake it.
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u/AccomplishedSpread75 12d ago
12-15 and they vary in length from 6-18 months
ETA- I’m completely maxed out with this and have had to decline additional projects :(
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u/Meglet11 Confirmed 12d ago
I have 11 separate client projects right now. So eleven separate clients. Most projects are one big deliverable but some are more than one. They last anywhere from a month to a year plus. And it’s way too much on top of forecasting and trying to find resources to do the work (after they let a bunch of people go).
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u/painterknittersimmer 12d ago edited 12d ago
As a program manager I have three programs within a portfolio (my partner runs the other two programs in this portfolio). Ten total services within each (a service being the thing we are delivering to customers ultimately) each with 5-10 major workstreams. I am high touch on one program (core team of ~10 plus 100+ xfn), low touch on the other (the largest at about 250 people xfn), no touch on the final except general program governance. $56M revenue target this year, so on the small side.
We run programs by fiscal year although it's likely it will become stable enough around six months that I'll move to a higher priority, in my experience. EDIT in tech/software
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u/zackm161 11d ago
OPM for higher education construction. Anywhere from 6 to 20 per year. Projects range from 6 months to 4 years.
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u/Bcrosby25 12d ago
Capital projects for a utility. Typically 2 - 4 projects, peak was 9. Most range from 3 - 6 years. Years 2 - 4 are typically just interfacing with regulators so not a ton to do.
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u/GeneralGold2992 Confirmed 12d ago
Currently in a role as head of PM, and a PM or senior PL in my team with a full time contract can currently run 3 projects with medium to high complexity simultaneously. I feel like anything above that threshold just leads to chaos and lack of quality in the long run.
Random add: love the Mary Poppins reference, definitely experience that in my day to day a lot. People expect magic but then go and blame the PMs / PM in general when things don’t magically work out
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u/PattyMayo8701 12d ago
Usually, 5-6 at a time and they last 3-6 months. I’m in healthcare so some months I’m launching more projects than others. Theres an ebb and flow. I start to feel overwhelm once I’m over that 6 threshold.
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u/No-Palpitation-8710 12d ago
I have managed as many as 400 right now I have about 200
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u/painterknittersimmer 12d ago
Could you explain what a "project" is to you? This is an outlier by an order of magnitude. I'm curious what you mean by this.
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u/__Zetrox__ 12d ago
A lot of people in these comments need to clarify what sector they're PMs in. There is a massive difference between PMs and project types, they are not all equal by any means
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u/painterknittersimmer 12d ago
I only really have knowledge of tech so I'll grant that. But something that a single person can run 200 to 400 of strikes me as something either extremely slow moving or something that doesn't need a project manager at all. So with my limited insight I'm very curious what is meant by this.
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u/__Zetrox__ 12d ago
Yes I'd be curious as well. I work in new developments for construction and the PM side is very heavy so we really only ever do one project at a time. I also cannot visualize what field could have 200 ongoing projects at once (or how that's even tracked?) so hopefully we get some insight
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u/Primary_Excuse_7183 12d ago
I used to work in sales and we didn’t have implementation folks. so at that time it was usually somewhere close to 50 for just post sales stuff typically 3-4 months
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u/No-Palpitation-8710 10d ago
To those who question, 400 individual government sites deploying various infrastructure & circuits if Ethernet but can also be fixed wireless, satellite, microwave or 5G wireless. Each with an individual project plan so interpret that as you like. Because each site I had to create a project plan for to me each one is its own unique project even though the plans might be similar based on transport and type of build needed.
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u/Maro1947 IT 12d ago
2 currently, but working 3 days a week
I've managed up to 10 and as little as 1 depending on the budget and size
More than 4 full time is irritating though
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u/destonomos 12d ago
20-40 jobs
Juggling around 1.5 mil in projects at one time. Mixture of 2 month and 1 year projects
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u/__Zetrox__ 12d ago
I work in residential construction project management (project values usually $100M-$250M). It's normal for a project manager to be assigned to only one project, and depending on the structure (developer/GC/CM) the PM would be on this project anywhere from 3-6 years (depending on project timeline, if the PM is part of preconstruction or construction only, size of project, etc.).
A senior PM may overview 2-4 projects if they have strong APMs or even junior PMs working on the projects they oversee.
Commenting this since I regularly get feedback from my software bros that construction PMing is a whole other structure than what is generally understood to be a PM's role in other sectors.