View source for Multiple Project Management: Summary, Theory and Improvement

== Definition ==
Multiple Project Management occurs many differerent organizations, every single day. As most companies do not have specific departments dedicated to specific projects, they will often have to share the resources they use. This can be in terms of manpower, materials, facilities etc. As this is a daily occurrence in alot of places, it is crucial that companies and organizations learn to properly deal with this, as to avoid some of the issues and problems, that could arise. 
Project management literature often assumes that the project is a single entity, isolated from other projects, while in reality a project manager can often be the manager of several projects, and have several employees dedicated to more than one project. This defeats the assumption of isolation, as the people involved will thus have to prioritize their time across the projects. In essence this means that MPM can provide companies with a more realistic approach to dealing with the distribution of resources and workload.
Generally the elements, which contribute to problems, are: Capacity, Complexity, Conflict, Commitment and Context  <ref name=''Management of multiple simultaneaous projects''> ''Management of multiple simultaneous projects: a state-of-the-art review'' </ref>. Capacity refers to the available resources within the company. It evaluates whether or not the company dedicates an appropriate amount of resources to the projects that it wants completed. Many companies face issues with this, as management tends to launch more projects, than what can realistically be carried out within the right timeline with the available resources.

Conflicts generally stem from one of the following three types of issues: People, systems or organizational. People issues usually arise from colleagues with non-compatible personalities and can be difficult to solve. Systems issues arise when the company fails to have a good priority structure or rewards system, meaning that the employees are not motivated/able to carry out their tasks. Organizational issues arise, when the company is structured in a way that leads to inevitable conflicts, which may often happen in certain structures, such as the matrix organization, where functional managers can often end up in a conflict with project managers.


[[File:Simple Matrix.jpg|center|thumb|Fig1:Matrix <ref name=''MatrixOrgStructure''>''https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/matrix-organization-structure-reason-evolution-1837''  </ref>|500px]]

Commitment refers to the organizations recognition of the importance of a given project. Oftentimes, projects are deemed as important, based on their size and not of their significance and possible impact on the company. It may often be an issue that the functional managers are not committed enough to a project, and thus will not dedicate the proper amount of resources to the project managers to allow them to properly carry out their tasks. The size of an organization is also a major factor in this regard, as the feeling of responsibility and commitment sometimes disappear in larger organizations, in comparison to smaller ones.

The context of a project can often be an important factor to look at, when finding root causes for problems in a company. The context of a project differs alot, depending on a lot of factors, such as the size of the organization, the specialization of the project, the urgenzy, the culture etc. These are all factors which are difficult to quantitatively measure, but are very relevant and can create issues within an organization.


Complexity refers to the situations that arise when different projects or business functions interact. This oftentimes create issues and problems that are very difficult and complex to resolve. As will be mentioned later in this article, this can lead to complex and unstructured problems, for which an organization will need to use certain tools in order to solve.