I'm looking for references that provide the average (optimal) projects per project manager. Do you have any you can share? I'd sure appreciate it. Thanks!
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This question is an ancient one, and it is impossible to answer. It depends on:
* Industry
* Project size
* Project complexity
* Organizational complexity
* The job description for your PMs
* Support staff available to your PM
* Automated tools available
* Reporting standards
* The skills and experience of the PM
I will stop listing questions, but I could keep going. I have never seen anyone really answer this question well, but have seen it on many discussion boards.
If anyone has a great answer, please share with us! Saving Changes...
Anonymous
It’s the kind of question I’m reluctant to answer as well because the only right answer is: “it depends” and all other answers could be wrong depending on the situation. What does it depend on? It depends on the answers to the kinds of questions Alex asked. By the way, I would add Organizational Politics as another key factor.
In our organization, obviously different than yours, we spent some time looking at historical data regarding how many hours as a percent of overall project hours were spent managing the project. For our larger projects (10,000 hours or more) we saw a pattern in which the PM spent about 8-15% of the overall project hours. For smaller projects, the percentage of PM time versus all project time was 12% to as high a 20%. Again, we could clearly see variances based on some of the issues Alex raised. For example, more experienced PM’s seemed to show a lower % for equivalent sized projects than lesser experienced PMs.
How does that help with the question on the numbers of projects per PM? If a project is 1,000 hours over one month, and I have 15% of that as PM, then I might spend 150 hours that month on the project… that’s close to full time. So we look at the overall anticipated project burn rate and then take a 15% PM overhead.. and that’s how much of the PM you may need in terms of hours in that duration.. From there you can derive project load. Yes, there are many pitfalls in this approach and you can take it to illogical conclusions … but if you’re looking for one crude approach, it’s an idea to toy with.
I agree it is impossible to answer otherwise. Even if you could develop a mathematical model that took into account many of these issues and questions, the bottom line is that many times judgment will override it. Saving Changes...
Great answer, Rich. I agree that you can come up with an organization-specific method to estimate these numbers. I have seen departments develop a staffing model, like you describe. They can find a percentage or formula that works for them. Expressing PM work as a percentage of total is a reasonable way to come up with a rough estimate.
Perhaps you can look at your historical project records and see how many work-hours were required by the PM on previous projects. I think that is one of the best ways to estimate the optimal projects per PM. Saving Changes...
Hmm, I like Rich's answer. I guess another real simple way of looking at it is, if you were a juggler, how many balls can you keep in the air without one, two or more falling occassionally.
Really, it depends, you also have to take into consideration the culture factor and maturity of the organization to streamline tools necessary and required for some projects and not others; a PM lite approach can help in many organizations.
You might want to look at this a different way. How many projects are in your portfolio, what is the strategic alignment for projects that will help make the organization meet their ROI, what are the resources necessary and available for the highest priority projects and who are your superstars you can align with your largest strategic projects and your good project managers with other lower priority tactical, operational projects?
So, I guess my food for thought is are you looking at stacking up the work with the available resources or strategically managing the portfolio to work on the right stuff (prioitized projects) and aligning the right resources (PMs)?
It is all a balancing act and like Alex mentions good metrics can go long way to helping find the right balance.
