Multiple Project Management: Summary, Theory and Improvement

Abstract

Multiple Project Management (MPM) is, as the name implies, the activity of handling several projects at once. MPM is a concept, which is very important to focus on in companies and organizations, who employ project managers, that are in charge of multiple projects, that are not interrelated or dependent on each other. As Project Management (PM) has become a science itself, so has MPM, as it addresses a number of the same issues. Where PM deals with managing the resources within a specific project, MPM deals with managing several projects, using the same resources (people, facilities etc) as that can be quite complex.

When analyzing companies/organizations with MPM issues, the issues are often of an organizational nature. Without proper MPM proper resource allocation to different projects can often become a big issue and nuisance project managers. While handling several projects at once is very common for many different organizations, it has not been researched much, even though it is considered very relevant and can possibly save on cost, reduce deadlines and loss . This is especially the case in R&D departments, where several different projects are often being carried out simultaneously, using the same people and resources, but with different deadlines and stakeholders. This can often prove difficult for the R&D manager to balance and thus the need for proper Multiple Project Management tools and theories is evident. Many companies have tried to solve these challenges by using standard PM tools. This has proven to be ineffective as many of these do not take into consideration, that several projects will be ongoing parallel .