If you know how many software projects you have coming up, and have a rough guess as to their size, what guidelines has anyone used to estimate how many projects a project manager should be able to handle at one time? One organization I worked for believed that the project manager should not add more than 10-15% to the overall workhours associated with a project. i.e. a full-time project manager would be able to manage 300-400 hours per week in burn rate. I would think a software development PM could handle a higher burn rate than that.
I realize that people love to shoot down simple rules-of-thumb... I know that the hueristics are just a starting point for discussion. I know that you then have to consider complexity, what stage the project is in, technology, organization span, locations, whether similar work has been done before, etc, etc. I'm not really after a list of WHAT to consider.... I'm just after some input on how others quantify their analysis after that long list of issues is known.
Bottom line: How have you determined how many PM's are needed based on your upcoming projects? Saving Changes...
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Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
ROI not Burn Rate For me the really big factor is not how many people hours can a PM manage. The right question is how important is the payback on the project and how focused should the PM and team be towards achieving the objective.
There is a false efficiency that plagues organizations and that plague is one of measuring productivity in terms of utilization and not in outcomes achieved. So how much ROI should a PM be managing at any given time? Saving Changes...
That depends on what ROI means. If you are a consulting organization billing hourly, then utilization is a good measure of productivity. That's a bit cynical, but true.
If you're working on a fixed bid project or interal app, then burn rate isn't a great measure of productivity.
Either way, ROI isn't the answer for planning how many projects a PM can manage at once. Saving Changes...
Mike Cooper PMPPrincipal Project Manager (retired, sort of)| New England Project ServicesWestford, Ma, United States
Rich, you are right that simple rules of thumb can be shot down. However, in my experience you are generally on the mark with project management taking in the order of 10-15% of a software project effort. I would include in this % the team leading overhead for team leaders reporting to a project manager.
Therefore I have generally felt (over a 20 year history of working in the IT service industry) that a full-time PM is needed for a 10-15 person project.
One of the biggest questions that you did not list (and would come under the "etc, etc" in your post, is the needs of the client (this is regardless as to whether it is an internal client or for an external customer). The extent to which the client requires "managing" will have a VERY significant impact on the workload of the project manager. Saving Changes...
Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
Just a note - Return on investment or the amount of VALUE a project will contribute to an organization is all that matters to the CEO - how many hours it takes is not the measure of productivity. And as a consultant, value billing is far more lucrative than hourly rates. A bit more risky but much more rewarding.
That said, we still must project the time it will take and the resources we will consume. If you are chasing 10 to 20 percent ROI then the cost and productivity of human capital is important. However when your chasing 500% ROI time to market is the driver. At least that has been my experience over the past 25 years. Saving Changes...
That's great that you've been able to manage value bidding, but from my experience in 5 consulting organization, few organizations are mature enough to even have the historical information need to make accurate bids, so jumping from that place to a place where you have the maturity to sell a value based model is quite a leap, at least in my experience. Saving Changes...
I reckon the quantity of projects to handle depends much on the size of projects. At peaks, I handle about 7 projects, each high in value but low in duration. It is easy when you are working on similiar requirements using the same resource.
The biggest challenge is when the implementation dates are very close and you are dealing with more than 2 members, exluding vendors. Saving Changes...
Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
Jacquelyn, I have to agree with you on organizational maturity and experience. Its a scary world out there sometimes :).
And I must confess that I am a bit of an evangelist about getting organizations to focus on the value it delivers to its stakeholders.
As a CIO for 9 years I found that my 4 project managers collectively could handle a 20,000 hours of projects with a technical staff of about 8O. My most successful PM could manage about 12,000 hours a year. However, on one occasion we had a 3,000 hour project that had a 5 million dollar per year payback. On that occasion I only allowed him to focus on the one project. The payback was too high to allow him or his team to be distracted. So I guess my point is that sometimes its not a question of how many projects could a PM manage, but how many should they manage. Hope that makes some sense. Saving Changes...
