Rebles Guide to PM

1. Project Status Reports Made Easy: Training

   

   Project communication and working with stakeholders are the things I'm most interested in from the big wide world of project management – I even wrote a book about it.

   As project managers, we spend around 80% of our time communicating in one form or another, and status reporting, or regular project reporting, is a chunk of that.

   Is project reporting your favourite part of the week?

   Thought not.

   

   I know it might feel like a niche subject but project reporting is a big deal for me because it’s one of the best ways to communicate about your project. It’s where you can:

   • fully control the message
   • be transparent
   • ask for decisions and help
   • impress stakeholders and build confidence and credibility
   • remind people what’s not going well and what is being done about it
   • set expectations
   • celebrate wins

   and so much more!

   On 22 April 2025 I’m offering a training session specifically focused to making sure your reports get read and that stakeholders take action.

   If:

   • You want to spend less time reporting all the stuff that has happened and gone and more time working on your project
   • You are fed up with your sponsor and other stakeholders saying that they don’t know what’s going on, even if you are giving them plenty of information.
   • You just feel that reporting on your project shouldn’t be this much of a headache!

   Then this online training is going to be perfect for you.

   Want to make project reporting easier? That's what this training is designed to do!

   The training will be taught live via Zoom on 22 April 2025 at 7 pm UK time (British Summer Time), which is 2 pm EDT.

   It includes:

   • Project report templates in PowerPoint, Excel and Word
   • Ebook on project reporting
   • Multi-project combined template in Excel and Word
   • And some other goodies!

   Cost: US$20 / £16

   The challenge with project reporting is that each company has different rules and approaches (or sometimes no standardization at all). In practice, what you do from one organization to the next might be different, which is perhaps why so much of what you read is vague and generic.

   However, there are some fundamental principles and basic good practices that you can implement on any project.

   And as this is a topic that comes up time and time again in my mentoring calls, I’ve put together a one-off training session about it.

   After you've watched the training, you'll know:

   • How to get people to contribute information for the report
   • What to focus on so your reports are meaningful and useful
   • How to understand what stakeholders need and how to give it to them
   • The basics that must be right so stakeholders pay attention
   • The proper way to use RAG statuses.

   

   Why learn with me?

   I'm the author of several project management books, including Shortcuts to Success and Managing Multiple Projects, and I've been leading business and tech projects for over 20 years. I'm an APM Fellow and a mentor, and I still work as a practitioner alongside my writing and training.

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   Prefer to pay in UK Sterling? Do that here.

   What past students say

   

   

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   FAQ

   Here are some FAQ to help you decide if it's the right training for you.

   What’s the time commitment?

   Overall, the time commitment is about an hour, although as it’s a live session I’ll stay on as long as necessary until all the questions are done.

   What’s the background of participants?

   I expect most of the people who will be on the course with you will be early or mid-career professionals working in project delivery/project management roles.

   Normally at my courses we get a good mix of people at various stages in their careers and from different industries.

   What about if I work in an Agile team?

   We'll be talking about weekly and monthly project reports that project managers have to create from templates or within their project management software.

   We won't talk about burndown charts, information radiators or other agile artifacts that are used for communication and reporting.

   If you work in an agile team that primarily reports status through Jira tickets, for example, then you'll probably find this training does not relate particularly well to your project environment.

   However, the concepts of what makes a good report, how to share bad news, engaging stakeholders for decision making and so on are good fundamentals for anyone involved in project work.

   The good thing is that project reporting skills are transferable into lots of scenarios, so even if you don’t need them on this project, you might need them on a future project.

   Can I claim PDUs?

   Yes. I will give you an attendance certificate that you can use as evidence for your portfolio. However, I am not a registered PMI authorized trainer.

   Can I claim the cost through my company?

   Yes. Get in touch and I can send you an invoice.

   What’s the cancellation/refund policy?

   I want you to be happy with the training. There is a 14-day refund policy.

   When will you be running this training live again?

   Not this year. I'm not sure yet what my training schedule looks like for next year.

   This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: Project Status Reports Made Easy: Training

2. What to do when you’ve got too much work

   

   Do you get to the end of the week and wonder what you’ve spent the days on? Your To Do list on a Friday might not look that much different to how it did on Monday, and yet you’ve barely had time to grab a coffee because you just haven’t stopped.

   You’ve got so many balls in the air. However, juggling will only get you so far. There are strategies you can use to help you streamline your projects and combine work across stakeholders and teams. I talk about those in detail in my book, Managing Multiple Projects, which sets out a 5-part framework for leading projects in parallel and still leaving the office on time.

   But what if you implement everything and still find there is too much to do?

   At some point you need to acknowledge that your workload is simply too much for the amount of time that you’ve got in the day. But are you ready to admit that to yourself? Or to your boss?

   Why people don’t admit to having too much work

   There are often unwritten expectations of behaviour at work that make it hard to talk about workload. For example, people don’t want to give the impression that they can’t cope because they are nervous about what that says about them: maybe they aren’t capable of taking a promotion, or leading that next big project.

   Maybe their colleagues will think they are slacking. There is also the stigma around talking about mental health issues and stress, burnout and overwhelm might be difficult to admit to.

   Having too much work is often the result of your manager not knowing what you are spending your time on. They don’t know how you are using your hours, so they assume you can take on something else until you tell them that you can’t do anything more.

   Let's talk about strategies for how to tell your boss that you’ve maxed out your workload.

   1. Schedule a meeting

   First, plan a meeting with your manager. You can use your regular one-to-one time, or book a separate conversation, whatever you feel would work best.

   Make sure it’s at a time where you don’t have anything to rush on to so you can digest what is said and reflect on the conversation, especially if you are worried about bringing this topic up.

   2. Prepare a list of your tasks

   The discussion will be easier if it is evidence-based. Make a list of all your open projects and all the other things you do around the edges of those, like mentoring colleagues, organizing team events, training, team leadership, management activities or the general admin that just needs to get done.

   Try to put a number of hours against each of the tasks. Allocate a priority to each project, based on your current understanding of how it ranks against your other work. If you have fixed delivery dates for any pieces of work, add those in too. This list represents your personal work portfolio: all the things you are responsible for delivering.

   I’ve done this exercise with many people and it’s always eye-opening. Expect your list to be longer than you first thought!

   3. Consider your options

   Before the meeting, look through your list and see if you can think of any options that would enable you to hit the deadlines and meet the commitments you wrote down. For example:

   • Delegate a project to someone else
   • Ring-fence 20% of your week for team management activities
   • Recruit a new colleague to share the workload
   • Got on a time management training course
   • Postpone a new project for two months while you close out three others.

   There might be some simple answers to how you can make the most of your time, or you might have to get creative about it.

   Your manager will be seeing your personal work portfolio for the first time, and will be looking to you for suggestions on how to deal with the problem you are telling them about.

   4. Have the discussion

   Talk to your manager. Tell them that you are concerned about your workload and would like some help prioritizing your tasks so you can make sure that the most important activities get enough of your time.

   Be prepared with details about what you have done to improve your personal productivity and manage your projects effectively so you can evidence the changes you made and how they have not been enough.

   Explain the steps you have taken to make sure you are working in the most efficient way. Use examples of how you have streamlined your work to keep your productivity levels high – this helps offset the concern that you are simply not organized enough or that you don’t use tried-and-tested techniques to save time at work.

   Share your portfolio list with them. Talk them through all the things you do and how much time they take each week. Point out the activities you have ranked as top priority and ask if they agree.

   Agree priority tasks and projects

   The goal of the conversation is to agree on the priority tasks and projects, and to highlight that by working on them, you may not be able to keep everything else moving forward at the same time because there are only a certain number of hours in the week.

   Discuss your options or recommendations for how best to address the workload. They might not be able to make a decision on the spot about certain choices, for example, hiring additional resources, but at least you have put the idea on their radar for consideration.

   

   5. Monitor the situation

   After the conversation, take action to put any agreed steps into practice. For example, reorganize your workload to focus on the things that were agreed as the top priorities. Report progress weekly, as this can also act as a reminder about what is not getting done.

   Most importantly, monitor how you feel about your workload after a couple of weeks. Has the overwhelm gone? Have bad habits started to creep back in? Are you staying later?

   And are you truly still working in the most efficient, streamlined way, using all the tools, strategies and tactics available to you to manage your portfolio of projects?

   No time management techniques in the world will help you leave the office on time if you routinely have more to do than any human could naturally cope with. However, you need to be open to identifying that this is a problem and willing to take steps to do something about it.

   Talking to your manager about workload might be awkward, it is your only reasonable choice.

   Don’t struggle on because that leads to burnout. You are not a resource; you are a human who deserves a supportive work environment and a workload that doesn’t feel like it’s crushing you.

   If you don’t feel that you can achieve that in your current role, it could be time to look for somewhere else to work.

   This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: What to do when you’ve got too much work

3. 10 Reasons Why Project Managers Need Risk Burndown Charts

   

   If you're a project manager who wants to deliver successful projects while keeping risks under control, you, my friend, are in the right place.

   Like many other project managers, I struggled with effectively communicating risk statuses to my stakeholders. My risk registers would become unwieldy documents that nobody read, mostly because they didn’t want to sift through the prioritized lists of risks for an idea on where we were when it came to closing out risks (their main concern).  

   And I knew I needed a simpler way to show that we were making progress. Which is where I started adapting risk burndown charts into my risk reporting.

   What’s a risk burndown chart?

   A risk burndown chart is a powerful visual tool that tracks your project's risk exposure over time.

   Originally introduced by John Brothers in The Agile Timesin 2004, it's a graph that plots the total risk severity on the y-axis against time on the x-axis, showing how risks are being "burned down" or reduced as your project progresses.

   Unlike traditional risk registers that list individual risks with their details, a burndown chart aggregates all risks into a single trend line, making it immediately clear whether your overall risk profile is decreasing, plateauing, or – worst case – increasing.

   Burndown charts are typically associated with agile teams and sprint goals, but you can use the same techniques for risk.

   This simple visual representation transforms complex risk data into an actionable insight that both team members and stakeholders can easily understand, allowing everyone to see at a glance if you're successfully mitigating risks (severity over time decreases) or if urgent attention is needed.

   

   Although internal team members might like the details around your risks, those external stakeholders want a simplified visual on the risk picture.

   And the risk burndown chart provides just that even if, like me, you are not working in an agile environment.

   Not convinced? Here are 10 reasons why you and your project team need risk burndown charts starting today!

   Reason #1: You'll gain visual clarity on risk exposure

   As I showed above, it's easy to get lost in the details of a complex risk register. But it doesn't have to overwhelm you, not with risk burndown charts.

   When you know how to visualize your project's overall risk exposure over time, you'll quickly understand whether your risk management efforts are working or not.

   Risk burndown charts transform complex risk data into a simple downward-sloping line that anyone can understand at a glance. Instead of wading through spreadsheets and text-heavy reports, you and your stakeholders can immediately see if risk levels are decreasing as expected.

   Reason #2: You'll make better-informed decisions

   If you want to guide your project to success, you need to know where the dangers lie! Once you have clear visibility of risk trends, you can make informed decisions about where to focus resources and when to adjust your plans.

   The chart plots cumulative project risk severity, so you can make choices about what to do next with that in mind.

   Reason #3: You'll establish credibility with stakeholders

   The best way to establish credibility is to demonstrate control of project risks. You’ll be showing cumulative risk exposure and what you are doing about it.

   Learning this technique will help position you as a professional who takes risk management and project planning seriously.

   If you're unsure where to start, begin by identifying your top ten project risks and plotting them on a simple chart. There are more tips for getting started at the end of this article.

   Reason #4: You'll improve team accountability

   With multiple team members responsible for different risk mitigation actions, it can be challenging to track progress effectively.

   Risk burndown charts give you a roadmap for monitoring risk ownership and creating an impactful risk mitigation plan.

   When you implement regular updates to your risk burndown chart, you'll improve accountability, increase transparency, and encourage proactive risk management across the entire team. And that translates to fewer surprises and smoother project execution.

   Then, regardless of what unexpected events occur, you can respond effectively and maintain control throughout the project lifecycle.

   Reason #5: You'll gain confidence in your risk management approach

   Do you suffer from uncertainty about whether your risk assessment efforts are adequate? Do you worry about risk audits? You're not alone – every project manager does at times, so don't feel bad about it. Instead, take action!

   The fastest way to overcome this is to let data guide your risk management approach.

   When you gain a deeper understanding of how your risk exposure is trending over time, you'll feel more confident about your approach to managing the level of risk, and that increases stakeholder confidence in your leadership.

   Here's what I mean: Lack of confidence is oftentimes due to lack of measurement. Risk burndown charts fill in that gap so you know exactly how effective your mitigation strategies are.

   

   Reason #6: You'll save time

   Time is a limited resource that we all wish we had more of. We can't create more time, but what we can do is prevent risks from stealing it.

   When you apply risk burndown charts, you'll find your project’s risk management processes staying on schedule more consistently. This simple graph can show when you are running ahead or behind schedule with risks.

   And risk owners will be motivated to provide their updates and stay off of the “Behind Schedule” list!

   Reason #7: You'll allocate resources more effectively

   When you use risk burndown charts to understand where your risk exposure is concentrated, you can start targeting your mitigation efforts more effectively.

   Do you really need to spread your risk management resources evenly across all areas, or can you focus them where they'll have the greatest impact? Your team's time is valuable. If addressing minor risks isn't the best use of your resources, then use my risk burndown approach instead.

   Optimizing resource allocation is sort of like finding hidden capacity; it's painless and immediately beneficial.

   Reason #8: You'll improve stakeholder communication

   That's the goal, right? But you don't want to overwhelm stakeholders with complex risk details. And ugh, who wants to? Here's a better way.

   My risk burndown approach helps you communicate complex risk information clearly and effectively, by showing you how to translate technical risk details into visual trends that anyone can understand.

   It all leads to better project sponsorship and support!

   Reason #9: You'll predict problems before they occur

   Maybe you're at that stage in your project management career where you're reacting to issues as they arise. We've all been there! It's likely some of them could have been prevented with better visibility.

   My risk burndown technique will help you spot plateaus or upticks in risk exposure and learn how to identify problem areas before they impact your project.

   You'll be able to predict potential issues, implement mitigation plans early, and maintain control without last-minute scrambling.

   And you'll never have to explain why you didn't see a problem coming again.

   Reason #10: You'll reduce project stress and improve work-life balance

   You can make your work easier and more enjoyable when you use risk burndown charts to gain control over project uncertainties. That's because having a visual representation of risk reduction provides peace of mind that simply can't be achieved through conventional risk registers.

   Once I stopped relying solely on communicating with stakeholders through risk registers and started visually showing risk trends, my "work" became less stressful and far more productive during status calls.

   Next steps for incorporating this technique

   If you’re convinced, here’s what you can do next.

   • Identify and quantify risks: List all identified project risks in a risk register. Assign each risk a severity score based on impact and likelihood. Use a numerical scale (e.g., 1-5 or 1-10) to quantify overall risk exposure.
   • Establish a risk baseline: Sum the severity scores of all risks at the start of the project to create a total risk exposure value. This will serve as your starting point for the risk burndown chart.
   • Track risk mitigation progress: Regularly update the risk register to reflect mitigation actions taken, reassess remaining risks, and adjust severity scores accordingly. Reducing the impact or probability of a risk should result in a lower overall risk exposure value.
   • Plot the risk burndown chart: Use a simple line graph to map total risk exposure (y-axis) against time (x-axis). Update the chart at regular intervals (monthly works well for longer projects) to visualize trends and ensure that risk levels are decreasing as expected.
   • Analyze trends and take action: Review the burndown chart to spot patterns. A steadily declining risk curve indicates effective risk management, while plateaus or increases may signal new emerging risks or ineffective mitigation efforts that require additional action.

   There you have it, 10 reasons you need risk burndown charts and some tips on getting started. When we invest in ourselves with the best risk management tools and techniques, positive and powerful results are inevitable.

   Start using a risk burndown chart to communicate your risk picture to your senior stakeholders. If you do, you’ll start seeing more productive conversations and more engaged stakeholders during your status meetings!

   This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: 10 Reasons Why Project Managers Need Risk Burndown Charts

4. How to Secure Resources for Your Projects

   

   Resource management is planning, getting and using the resources that you need to do your project efficiently.

   Often, organizations use ‘resources’ as an unfriendly shorthand for ‘people’. The term can also mean equipment, services, software, hardware, supplies, raw materials and anything else you need in order to make the project go forward efficiently.

   When you manage multiple projects, the biggest resource challenge is normally people. You might have to order supplies or book equipment, but that is easier to manage than people’s time.

   Identify the resources required

   In order to make sure you are using individuals’ time in the most effective and efficient way, you first need to know who is going to be working on the project with you. These people form part of your project team and are normally subject matter experts or others who can contribute to the work.

   Typically, these people will work on your project on a part-time basis. They might be working on several of your projects, or supporting another project manager with their work. Maybe they have ‘day job’ responsibilities in an operational capacity.

   Give people notice

   People are busy and have other things to do besides work on your projects. That’s why it is important to give team leaders and individuals enough notice for the work required.

   Get commitment for their time as early as you can so they know the work is coming up for them and they can plan for it.

   Consolidate your project plans

   Use a multi-project, consolidated schedule to plan forward, identifying what support or skills you might need in four or five months’ time if you don’t currently have resources booked.

   If you have secured time from an individual, look across all your projects to see how you can best use it, especially if there are lulls in the upcoming work. They could use their project hours to train a colleague, develop new skills so they can support other areas of the project or get ahead on future tasks.

   Use capacity planning software (if you have it)

   Capacity planning software allows you to see resource assignments across multiple projects and teams. However, many organizations don’t have tools that provide this level of data, or a culture that enables forecasting and planning at a granular level.

   You may find yourself having to plan people’s time commitments with just a spreadsheet and using detective work to talk to team leaders about who is available to work on what at what time. This can be time-consuming in itself.

   Secure support for the work

   In some situations – for example where your organization does not yet have a mature approach to managing projects – the onus falls to you to ensure you secure support for your work. There are some things you can do to make it easier to make sure that your team members have enough time to dedicate to the work that you need them to do.

   That starts with understanding who influences decisions around how individuals spend their time – the gatekeepers.

   

   Build relationships with gatekeepers

   Build relationships with gatekeepers – the people who manage the priorities and time for subject matter experts and resources who work on your projects. These gatekeepers could be team leaders or department heads. They are typically the line manager of the person whose time you want for your project.

   Ideally, you will have built a relationship before you need to ask for someone from their team to support your project. Your internal network is an important source of support for your project.

   Try to dedicate some time regularly to improving and deepening your professional relationships with colleagues by making time for them, sharing useful information with them, and being interested in what they are doing.

   Explain the commitment required

   When you need to ask for support from their team members, start by explaining the role that that individual would play on the project so that the gatekeeper understands what that person is being asked to do.

   If you can, show how the project work links to the strategic objectives of the organization or department. This helps demonstrate the value in the work and elevates the ask from simply a task to a contribution to the organization.

   It’s really important to keep communication channels open with the line managers of your project team members.

   Make time for regular check ins with team leaders. This is one of the primary ways that you will find out about upcoming absence, planned holiday and other times when the individual will be unavailable for project work, if the person themselves doesn’t let you know.

   Build relationships with subject matter experts

   Certain project team members and stakeholders are senior enough in the organization that you don’t need to talk to their manager about their availability and what else they are working on. Talk to them directly.

   These are the kind of things that you can ask:

   • How much time do you/your team/individual have for my project?
   • What is your top priority if it’s not my project?
   • And how can my project and I support you in doing that?

   This question is not an offer to take on more work for their top priority project. It’s a way to uncover how you can manage your project work in a way that doesn’t interfere with their priority goals.

   For example, you may be able to work around their other commitments by only scheduling project meetings with them on a Tuesday, for example.

   • When do you/they have upcoming leave?
   • When will you/they be really busy?

   Getting visibility of absences is helpful for your project planning. Knowing their busy times is useful too. For example, if you’re working with the finance department, there will be particular parts of the financial year where they’re very busy. Try and find out what those are for the people in the project team.

   • What roadblocks do you see?
   • What’s coming up that I don’t know about that you think might be a problem?

   There could be activities or events happening in the future that you’re not aware of. Ask open-ended questions to uncover things that might create problems or opportunities for your project schedules.

   Keep resourcing under review

   Whatever you hear from line managers or the resources themselves, assume that things will change in the near future. The information you get today is only good for today – who knows what their priorities will be in three months.

   Monitor progress against your plan and to do that you need accurate, updated information about what people are doing and how much time they continue to have to work on your projects.

   Keep talking and reviewing, having the same conversation about availability and upcoming work as a way of reminding people about their commitments and also to reassure yourself that they really will be available when you need them.

   Make changes to the schedule based on that information to ensure it reflects reality.

   A lot of the challenges come from the organization around you not being able or willing to understand the logistics and requirements of running multiple projects in parallel. There’s no magic bullet for that, but keep communicating and using your documentation and data to demonstrate the impact of resource conflicts on your work.

   Pin for later reading

   

   This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: How to Secure Resources for Your Projects

5. How to Thrive in the Multi-Project Workplace

   

   Around a third of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the average Western economy is a result of project activity so it is unsurprising that organizations do so many projects. They are the way strategy gets delivered, and in what PMI calls the ‘project economy’, it’s likely that organizations will continue to deliver work through the structure of projects.

   However, because there are so many projects, we all often have to contribute (or lead) several at a time. That makes multi-project management an expectation in many roles, so let’s unpack that for a moment.

   If you are managing multiple projects, it means you have more than one project on the go at the same time.

   You’ll have different project teams (even if the people on them are the same people).

   You might have different sponsors or customers, all with their own expectations of what’s possible, and probably the belief that their project is the most important.

   Each project has its own timeline and you have to manage your time to keep them all moving forward to hit the planned deadlines and milestones. This workload is different from the workload of someone managing a single project, or carrying out their day job. There are more moving parts and normally more people involved.

   Managing multiple projects is different from having responsibility for just leading one project. That’s not to say that leading a single project is easy: the larger the project, the more complex and strategically important it tends to be, and that comes with its own stressors.

   What a multi-project environment looks like

   A multi-project environment features the following:

   • A large number of unrelated stakeholders who need to be engaged in various, sometimes isolated, sometimes connected activities
   • More project sponsors to please
   • More expectations to meet
   • Project teams made up of part-time resources who also have a day job to do that takes priority over their project work
   • More resource conflicts to resolve, often with subject matter experts booked to work on multiple projects who then struggle to see their whole work commitments and aren’t able to complete their tasks in the timeframe they expected
   • Constant pressure from deadlines instead of the comfortable ebb and flow of busy and not-so-busy points on a single project: every month one of your projects is beginning, completing or hitting some major milestone.

   A workload that includes multiple projects also requires a slightly different take on the core skills that are used to manage a single project.

   It’s not a totally new skillset, but it’s a smarter, more complex way of addressing the work and the complexities of balancing many people, processes and products.

   Balancing your workload

   Every day is a balance between doing something to advance your own To Do list, and supporting your team and colleagues with their work. What should you be focused on? How do you choose what to do first? How can you use what you already know to make this easier? Those are some of the challenges of delivering multiple projects.

   Whether you have the job title of project manager or not, you could have a workload made up predominantly of projects. Perhaps the bulk of your time is spent in an operational role, with the expectation that you will manage projects around the edges of that.

   You may find that your project workload changes from time to time depending on what your organization requires of you. For example, a finance manager may find themselves spending more and more time on improvement projects during the majority of the year, and then be fully focused on year-end accounting when it’s time to do the books for the past 12 months.

   If you’ve only recently been given a couple of projects to manage, you might be feeling OK about your workload at the moment, whatever it looks like.

   The default approach most people use is to replicate the same methods as you use to run a single project. Just repeat exactly what you are doing for your first project, using the same approach, tools and techniques.

   However, it won’t be long before you start to feel that you don’t have time to do everything to the level of quality you expect of yourself.

   You recognize that things aren’t going as well as they could, and you feel it should be easier to work efficiently with a multi-project workload.

   Skills for managing multiple projects

   To thrive in a multi-project job, you need different skills – or at least the ability to apply your project management skills in a different way.

   Perhaps unsurprisingly, in a survey for my book Managing Multiple Projects, communication came out as the top skill required for people managing multiple projects, closely followed by planning, scheduling and stakeholder engagement. Then there was:

   • Team management (53%)
   • Resource management (50%)
   • Leadership (49%)
   • Risk management (39%)
   • Governance (31%).

   That’s a lot to factor in to every working day. While we don’t get up in the morning and say, “Today I’m going to use my leadership skills,” we cycle through a huge number of professional skills each and every hour so the job gets done.

   That’s a lot to factor in to every working day. While we don’t get up in the morning and say, “Today I’m going to use my attention to detail,” we cycle through a huge number of professional skills each and every hour so the job gets done.

   

   People are an important part of making sure multiple projects stay on track, and are delivered in an efficient way, but there is something else that will help you thrive in a multi-project environment, and that’s prioritizing.

   Understand the work priorities

   Make sure you know what your top priority work commitments are. Then line up everything behind those so you have enough time and the right resources to see them through.

   Share your personal priorities and team priorities with your colleagues so they know what is important – and, crucially, can redirect your efforts if you’ve misunderstood something.

   There is the expectation that we’ll juggle more and more projects at work as organizations expect more from leaders and deliver parallel changes. However, we can step up to meet those expectations with the right skills and support.

   This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: How to Thrive in the Multi-Project Workplace