Bad multi-tasking in multi-project environments has a devastating impact upon the duration of tasks in projects. This in turn leads to projects over-running timescales and budgets.

Management continues to believe the erroneous and damaging assumption “the earlier we start each project, the earlier each project will be finished,” little improvement will be made in the delivery performance of projects.

This behavior leads to a queue of tasks behind most resources leading them to be under increasing pressure to work on more than one task – bad multi-tasking is unavoidable.

Flow is the number one consideration in multi-project environments. The objective for businesses is to complete projects as fast as possible not to start as many projects as possible. However, this is often forgotten in the drive to constantly improve.

A bold step is required by top management to change this behavior and improve project performance. They must restrict and reduce the number of open projects in the business. This will naturally lead to a reduction in the number of tasks queuing for each resource. A further improvement is seen if the number of open tasks for each resource is restricted.

In multi-project environments, taking these actions significantly reduces the lead time of all projects by increasing the flow and does not result in resources being starved of work. When most projects are of similar content, the rate of projects completed increases by a minimum of 20%.