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Task duration when working on multiple projects

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Tom Parisi Nc, United States

Hi All,

Looking for some suggestions on how to calculate task duration when your resources are working on multiple projects simultaneously, all of which may or may not be at the same phase.

My example to assist with what we are trying to accomplish is given task A will take 4 hours (single project) to complete. However if that same resource has 5 other projects in play, the duration of the task is still 4 hours but could now possible span three days due to other tasks from the other projects. So although the actual task does not take any longer it will due to the other project tasks being done.



 



Thanks to all who take the time to read and reply!!
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Rami Kaibni
Community Champion
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Tom, I am not sure I totally understand your question, but one thing you can do is use a Kanban or similar approach to visualize all tasks across projects. This helps in managing workload and allows you to see how tasks overlap, making it easier to estimate when a resource will be available to focus on a specific task.
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Tom Parisi Nc, United States
Rami - thanks for your response - basically asking how do other PM's manage the engineer's project tasks for a given point in time (IE Current Week) in an environment where the project engineer will be working on several projects at once. What is happening now is for that given time period the project tasks listed in our PMS is not accurate due to various factors of why a task is getting pushed out, which also means we need to push out the project end date - just looking to hear what others are doing in this environment - hope that was better! :)
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Rami Kaibni
Community Champion
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Tom - I understand better now so my initial response still stands. Depending on the industry, Kanban for the most part can help. Another thing we usually do is including buffer time to account for potential delays. A common approach is to add 10-20% to the estimated duration to account for other commitments and unexpected issues. I hope this helps - At least I tried :-)
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Tom Parisi Nc, United States
Rami,

That was perfect - simple yet effective.

Thanks so much!


TP
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1 reply by Rami Kaibni
Oct 24, 2024 2:20 PM
Rami Kaibni
...
You're welcome, Tom!
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Rami Kaibni
Community Champion
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Oct 24, 2024 1:52 PM
Replying to Tom Parisi
...
Rami,

That was perfect - simple yet effective.

Thanks so much!


TP
You're welcome, Tom!
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Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada
Tom -

Unfortunately, when you don't have team members dedicated to a single activity at a time, there is a high degree of unpredictability regarding duration. Even something as simple as 50% allocation might mean many different things - 3.5 hours a day, 2.5 days a week or one week on and one week off the project.

In such cases, estimate duration based on whatever allocation your functional managers are willing to give and then ensure you add contingency buffers before key milestones to absorb the inevitable delays of team members spending more time on other projects than had been expected.

Kiron
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Keith Novak Tukwila, Wa, United States
My thinking is in line with Kiron. First I estimate how long it would take to do the task if someone was dedicated to the project full time. Then I get some sense of how much time percentage-wise they can spend on my project. Then I knock their planned efficiency down due to the fact they must go back and forth between my project and others because every time you switch tasks there is an efficiency loss and a higher chance of errors that will drive rework.
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Vladimir Liberzon R&D Director| Spider Project Team Moscow, Russian Federation
You asked about multi-project or portfolio management.
If you have the software that can include the schedules of individual projects into project portfolio (or multi-project) and calculate portfolio schedule taking into account existing constraints (in particular, resource availability constraints) and project priorities, you will get the schedule that shows who must do what and when.
Your task will take the same 4 hours but the schedule will show when it must start and finish and when the tasks of other projects must be performed.

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