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Jory MacKay on August 06, 2025

Jory MacKay

Jory is a writer, content strategist and award-winning editor of the Unsplash Book. He contributes to Inc., Fast Company, Quartz, and more.

August 06, 2025 · 10 min read

Being a project manager can often feel like you’re fighting the mythical many-headed Hydra — every time you manage to finish a project, two (or more) pop up in its place.

One survey found that 85% of project managers work on at least two projects at once — with 15% saying they have more than 10 projects on the go at any given time.

Running multiple projects means more tasks to keep track of, increased context switching, the added stress of managing multiple stakeholders, and balancing competing priorities. As your projects multiply, being organized becomes a non-negotiable.

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But more than just staying disciplined with your to-do lists, busy project managers require specific workflows and a centralized system to provide structure and clarity and allow for cross-project collaboration.

How multiple projects multiply the risk of failure

As you progress in your project management career, you’ll undoubtedly be given more responsibilities. But with those responsibilities comes added stress and complexity — especially when tasked with balancing the needs of multiple projects and teams at once.

While managing multiple projects at once can seem overwhelming at first, once you get comfortable in the chaos, you can learn to align and streamline deliveries to maximize their potential — similar to the benefits seen in program management.

Multi-project alignment allows you to optimize resources, reduce dependencies, and even pool your collective knowledge.

In the best case scenarios, you can use the insights from managing multiple projects to help solve problems, enhance stakeholder collaboration, and uncover creative ideas for the future.

But getting to this sort of multi-project flow state takes time to master, and only works if the workload balance is just right. Overdo it, and you end up straight in the red zone, where risk increases and projects start going wrong.

Here are some of the major risks associated with managing multiple projects:

• Project delays. Multiple projects put a strain on your team and your resources. When the workload gets too high, it can easily lead to delays, missed deadlines, and blown project schedules.
• Cost increases. More time inevitably leads to increased costs, causing projects to exceed their budgets and erode their return on investment. In the worst cases, this can make projects completely unviable, causing them to be stopped indefinitely.
• Mistakes and poor quality. When teams are spread too thin, it can lead to mistakes that can have costly consequences. In addition, even when the work does get done, it’s rushed, leading to poor quality outputs that diminish the project’s benefits.
• Technical debt. Talking of poor quality, where teams are stretched, they tend to look for the fastest solution rather than the best one. In tech projects, this leads to technical debt that must be addressed later on, often at greater cost than if a better solution had been chosen upfront.
• Competing priorities. When the workload is too much, project managers (and their teams) are forced to make priority calls on what work they can and can’t do. While prioritization isn’t inherently bad, when resource capacity is down, it causes those deprioritized projects to slow down.
• Unhappy stakeholders. When projects are deprioritized, deadlines are missed, and costs increase, it causes frustration for stakeholders. This makes relationships tense, leading to further frustrations and the chance of conflict.
• Individual (and team) burnout. Perhaps most important of all, managing multiple projects is stressful for the teams involved. If the stress becomes too much, it can lead to burnout for the individual, in turn, putting greater pressure on the wider team.

How to manage multiple projects: 7 actionable tips

Managing the risks of multiple projects isn’t easy. But with a clear system in place, you can minimize your chance of (multiple) failures — and even become more efficient with your and your team’s workloads.

Here’s a hands-on guide on how to approach running multiple projects at once:

1. Agree on a project management framework

First things first, when you’re managing multiple projects, you need to create structure around how you deliver them. This is the foundation for building a well-oiled project management machine, helping you move initiatives from start to finish in an ordered and controlled fashion.

Here are some resources to help you out:

• Choose a lifecycle. There are many ways to approach delivering projects depending on your business model, risk appetite, and cost of change. Whether it’s a more linear approach (sometimes called waterfall) or a more iterative approach (known as agile), pick the type of project management framework to best suit your deliveries.
• Use stage gates to bring control. Alongside your chosen lifecycle, stage gates are a great way to bring structure and control to your deliveries. When you’re busy managing multiple projects, they give you clear points to check that everything is on track, and make Go, Hold, Recycle, or Kill decisions if needed.

How does this help you manage multiple projects?

When managing multiple projects, it’s easy to lose track of progress and let standards slip. A project management framework and clear stage gates creates consistency, giving everyone confidence and clarity on where the project is and how it’s performing.

If you overdo your multi-project workload you’ll end up straight in the red zone, where risk increases and projects start going wrong.

2. Centralize your projects, tasks, and data

With your governance sorted, you must put tools in place to enable you to succeed. For project managers, a project management tool is a must-have, helping you bring all of your project data, including tasks, issues, dependencies, and risks, together to track everything in one place.

Here are some resources to help you out:

• Get your tasks lined up. At its core, project management is all about stringing a series of tasks together to get you from A to B. As such, once you’re on board with a tool, focus on getting all of your project tasks imported, including dependencies and time estimates. If you need help, take a look at our task management guide.
• Set some key metrics. Once your data is in one place, agree on a set of key North Star metrics you’ll use to track your projects. These include things like progress vs. schedule, spend vs. budget, and milestone completion %. Use these metrics correctly, and it’ll give you an instant view of your projects, enabling you to steer the ship and make decisions accordingly.
• Use the data to make intelligent decisions. The power of a central system is that you can look across projects and make intelligent decisions on risk management, schedules, dependencies, and resource allocation. This allows you to optimize what you have and increase your chance of project success.

How does this help you manage multiple projects?

Having everything in one place gives you and your team a central point to work from. This helps minimize confusion, boost team effectiveness, and create a single source of truth for your stakeholders.

Pro tip: Use Planio’s cross-project overviews to stay organized

The best project management tools allow you to connect your day-to-day priorities with your company and product’s larger strategy.

Planio’s powerful task management system takes care of your daily priorities, while its flexible issue and project relation functionality allows you to create hierarchies and structure across multiple projects.

Here’s a few of the key ways that Planio keeps you organized when working on multiple projects:

Fully customizable Issue Lists across projects. The Planio issue list has a huge selection of filters and options — not only for the project overview but also for your cross project overview. Just use the “All Projects” view and choose which issues you need to manage, no matter what project they are part of.

Pro Tip: Create saved queries so you can access your most useful issue lists in just one click, across all projects.

Create issue hierarchy with parent and sub-issues. Planio allows you to break down larger activities into manageable tasks to keep you organized and ensure you’re not missing details of important tasks. You can enable cross-project issue hierarchies as well.

Use issue relations to connect tasks across multiple projects. You can also connect issues that aren’t directly related — such as dependencies across multiple projects. You can choose the type of relationships between tasks, such as blocks, blocked by, precedes, follows, and more.

View cross-project tasks and dependencies in a single chart. Once you’ve created detailed connections between tasks and issues, you can zoom out and view the bigger picture in a single Gantt chart.

This view shows you the flow of your tasks and subtasks, and where issues are being blocked by their dependencies.

Share your sprints and milestones with multiple projects. Planio allows you to combine issues from different projects into one sprint. The Shared Sprint feature also means no more duplicate sprints or messy crossovers — just a clear, centralized roadmap for your team.

Track Time Across All Projects With Planio, each team member can log time on a task-by-task basis. Then, with the All Projects view in Spent Time, managers can get a clear overview using powerful filters and custom reports.

For Admins: Automate workflows with Planio’s workflows and permissions system to ensure consistent processes between teams. You can also make use of custom fields to get exactly the data you need into all of your projects and tasks.

Want to try Planio with your own team? Sign up for a free 30-day trial — no credit card required.

3. Run project kickoff meetings to define goals, scope, responsibilities, and timelines

When starting your projects, it’s important to clearly define your goals, scope, responsibilities, and timelines. This gives everyone an agreed position from which to move forward, making it easier to manage each of your projects, as well as providing clear sight of any dependencies or risks ahead of time.

Here are some resources to help you out:

• Formalize project kickoffs. A formal project kick off meeting ensures everyone understands the boundaries of the project, including what is in and out of scope, and who is responsible for which tasks. A project kick off document formalizes this further, giving teams a resource to refer back to as the project progresses.
• Agree your scope. Scope creep is one of the biggest reasons projects fail, as they go off course completing work that doesn’t align to the company’s objectives. Create and agree to a clear scope of work at the beginning of your project that clearly defines what will and won’t be completed.

How does this help you manage multiple projects?

When managing multiple projects, you have even less bandwidth to resolve uncertainty and misalignment. Formalizing your scope during a project kick off sets clear parameters and increases your chances of success.

4. Align stakeholders across different projects

As a project manager, you should always be clear and upfront with your stakeholders. This is especially true when you’re managing multiple projects. You should make it clear you’re working on multiple initiatives, and encourage stakeholders to collaborate across projects to look for ways to maximize value and boost efficiency.

Here are some resources to help you out:

• Master stakeholder management. Project management is a people-focused profession, so it’s no surprise that those who succeed do so because they prioritize building strong relationships. Read our stakeholder management guide to help you get your stakeholders on side when managing multiple projects.
• Focus on cross-project alignment. Hosting simple cross-project alignment meetings is a great way to get stakeholders from different projects talking. During these meetings, walk through the specifics of each project, including:
  • Progress from the past week
  • What work is planned to be completed this week
  • Any known or suspected issues, challenges, or roadblocks

How does this help you manage multiple projects?

If the project manager doesn’t create transparency and collaboration, they become the single point of failure between each project. Aligning stakeholders, especially sponsors, is a great way to bring everything together, share challenges, solve issues, and set the foundation for prioritization.

Managing multiple projects is hard work, but it’s not impossible.

5. Use prioritization strategies with your team to focus on high-value work

When your workload begins to feel like too much, you need a way to choose what projects to push and which ones to pause. While no one likes having to prioritize, it’s a key skill for those managing multiple projects to ensure high-value work is delivered on time and to budget.

How to select a prioritization strategy. The best way to make priority calls is to use a standard approach that focuses on objective data. This takes the emotion out of the situation, using hard facts to ascertain which project has the most value, and thus, which one should be prioritized. Check out our prioritization guide, including techniques such as RICE, for more information.

How does this help you manage multiple projects?

With limited time, money, and resources, you can’t do everything you’d like all at once. Prioritization (especially being deprioritized) is an emotional process for stakeholders, so use a standard approach to calm the noise and generate data-driven decisions.

6. Make communication and updates a priority

For stakeholders, as well as team members, managing multiple projects is confusing. The constant context switching is exhausting and relies on strong communication to avoid chaos, but also to empower people to speak up if they see issues.

Here are some resources to help you out:

• Create a communication plan. Like all things in project management, a plan helps standardize, co-ordinate, and organize activities. Communication plans are no different, giving everyone a clear view of what’s being communicated, when, and by whom, to keep your projects on track.
• Be conscious of different communication styles. Communication is a very human activity, and not everyone likes to communicate, or be communicated to, in the same way. As you get to know your stakeholders, ask them about their preferred communication styles so you can engage with them and keep them updated in the right way.

How does this help you manage multiple projects?

Through the chaos of managing multiple projects, keeping everyone up to date and aligned is a real challenge. A well-considered communications plan provides structure, boosts relationships, and ensures everyone knows the latest plan.

Execute your communication plan in your project management tool. While some stakeholders may prefer emails, calls, or chat message updates, keeping important communication in a centralized, and public, space keeps everyone on the same page.

Planio helps you stay in touch with your team with multiple options, from issue comments to Wikis, company blogs, and discussion forums.

7. Delegate work to take the pressure off

As a project manager managing multiple projects, you can quickly become the single point of failure. You’ll need to spend more time coordinating, communicating, and aligning stakeholders, so won’t always have enough time to do other tasks. To stop your project grinding to a halt, you must master delegation to avoid becoming a bottleneck.

Here are some resources to help you out:

• Master delegation. You can’t just give tasks out left, right, and center. Instead, you have to know which tasks you can or can’t delegate, and who in your team is best placed to do them. Our delegation guide breaks this often fraught scenario down into a 6-step guide to help busy project managers succeed.
• Optimize your time. For the tasks you can’t delegate, multi-projects PM’s have to learn how to organize their time effectively. Productivity methods like Pomodoro or Time Blocking are great for this, helping you structure your day by task or projects to ensure you’re always getting things done.

How does this help you manage multiple projects?

There are only so many hours in the day, so busy project managers need to guard their time so they can focus on the things that matter. Delegation and productivity systems are both great ways to do this, optimizing your day to make the most impact.

How to address the biggest multi-project management mistakes

To finish up, let’s take a look at the common multi-project problems and how you can solve them. See this as a handy cheat sheet you can use to help you solve problems as they arise in your next deliveries.

The bottom line: Planio makes managing multiple projects easier

Managing multiple projects is hard work, but it’s not impossible. Putting the right structure and systems in place helps align projects by simplifying progress tracking, strengthening relationships with stakeholders, and identifying cross-project benefits.

The best way to achieve this multi-project flow state is to align all of your project data and processes into a central project management tool. This is where Planio can transform your way of working, bringing tasks, documents, team members, and reporting together in one place to help you stay organized, boost productivity, and remain connected to the bigger picture!

Try Planio with your own team — free for 30 days (no credit card required!)