What is your industry experience in terms of what a typical Project Manager can manage effectively? If you adjust for experience, skill, complexity, cost, risk and uncertainty would you be able to provide a general reply such as within my healthcare IT infrastructure PM experience we typically have 2-3 concurrent projects running at different phases. Or within our industry we've found it best to dedicate 100% of a PM to a single project throughout its duration. Or, we have found a project manager can typically scale to approximately 3 projects concurrently without incident, risk or impact to quality, outcomes or budget. Saving Changes...
A lot depends on what the PM is expected to do, the degree of administrative overhead imposed by governance standards, the complexity of the project, the number of key stakeholders requiring regular interaction and the life cycle or approach used to deliver the project.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Kjrk,
in my experience it does not so much depend on industry but on project complexity/size/importance. As a rule of thumb I would say a team of 8 full time team members requires a full time project manager.
There are PMs that manage multiple and rather small projects, often they have a portfolio for one customer, a common team for those projects, and take on non-PM roles in those projects (like business analyst, sales rep, architect). Or for one product.
I do agree with Kiron. It depends. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
In my personal experience I was (and I am) program/project manager for projects in multiple domains. How much projects at the same time? It depends on the organization culture. The accepted percentage is the project manager will spend 20%-25% of total project duration time performing project management activities. So, it could be 4 at the same time. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
I've gone from having seven projects at the same time to being dedicated for a single project for years. Saving Changes...
