Managing Small Projects Simultaneously

At Premium Minds, we often work on complex, long-term products. Still, many of those journeys start with smaller initiatives like proof-of-concepts or MVPs. These short projects, usually lasting less than two months, require a different mindset: less overhead, sharper focus, and a careful use of time. In these situations, PM allocation is lean on purpose, ensuring that most of the effort is directed towards delivery rather than process.

After organizing an internal discussion about this topic, I’ve decided to share with a broader audience the strategies I have employed to give the best to each customer.

Looking at one project at a time

Managing multiple projects is a bit like playing speed chess on multiple boards. I advise you to start by analysing each project separately.

Plan the project time

The first thing to do when you start a new project is to plan the time:

• Look at the defined plan for the customer to know the percentage of your time allocated to this project.
• Plan the customer-facing moments. Define the schedule for a kick-off session and a closure one, which will need more preparation. In the meantime, see the time that is left and define the right periodicity of check-up meetings that won’t steal focus from what really brings value to the project from your side.
• Leave a larger slot booked in your calendar near demo or validation moments.
• Go back with these milestones in mind and adjust your regular weekly allocated time.
• Check the expected invested time for part-time members like UI, UX and web developers. Ask each one to double-check if it is enough for the assigned tasks and try to adjust if necessary.
• Keep regular track of the time spent by each profile and give feedback on that. Advise team members to keep a bit more time at the end for adjustments and corrections. As soon as core development is completed, gradually reduce involvement to avoid over-investing in low-impact refinements.

Organize team activities

Then you should look at the internal activities:

• Replace some formal ceremonies with lightweight, real-time communication to reduce overhead and maintain momentum.
• Replace regular retros with iterative feedback as soon as things happen, but still reserve time for the final retro that will have an impact not on the project, but on lessons learned for the organization.
• Schedule an alignment session at the beginning and another at the end to make a design review and invite the extended team, including UX, UI and web development profiles.

Manage your focus

Get to know where you personally create leverage:

• Short projects with small PM allocation need team members with a greater degree of responsibility and independence. Make sure you get the right people for your team.
• Identify developers or other team members who could have direct contact with the customer when doubts arise, avoiding blockages due to PM unavailability.
• Regarding the customer problem and the available team, define in which area you will bring the greatest impact to the project and invest all remaining time there.

Set expectations with the customer

In a kick-off session with the customer:

• Be clear that in a short project the approach must be pragmatic.
• Align right away on the calendar for the necessary meetings and keep them to a maximum of 30 minutes.
• Define the communication channel and be available by phone for any urgent issues.
• Be clear about the short time for feedback between final delivery and go-live (usually less than 1 week).
• Ask for infrastructure access and deployment permissions to be resolved at the very beginning. We don’t want to run into problems just a few days before a release.

Interact with the customer

In the following sessions with the customer:

• Help the customer stay aligned with the agreed pragmatic approach and highlight any dependencies that might impact progress.
• Try to gather more questions and send them in bulk to prevent an overload in communication from both sides. This is also true for long-term projects.

The puzzle of managing small projects

Managing one project well is easy. Managing three simultaneously requires a second layer of thinking to solve the puzzle.

Manage your time across projects

In a nutshell, you have to put your time management skills into action:

• Go through your calendar, browsing for the specific checkpoints and delivery moments of each customer, and try to separate them by at least one week to achieve the best focus on each customer. If not possible, at least place them on different days of the same week.
• Use regular breaks like lunch or snack time to switch from one project to another when tackling different projects on the same day.
• Respect your previously allocated time for each project so that you can have full focus on one context at a time.
• My calendar for team work is planned weekly to match team members' availability and then daily for focused individual work.
• Pay special attention to giving timely feedback on the work of part-time profiles, as they are also assigned to other projects.

Communicate clearly

As a PM, communicate your availability clearly. I usually share my focus for the week so teams know when I’m more available for each project.

Avoid blockages

In short-duration projects, any blocker can turn into a delay and compromise deadlines. To avoid blockages:

• Be aware of everyone’s holidays and ask part-time team members about concurrent projects and their deadlines in order to request help at the right time.
• When waiting for customer feedback, make it clear how long you will wait and the impact on team progress.
• Be quick in your feedback for UX/UI, as those roles are also dealing with multiple projects and need to avoid constant context switching.
• Take into account that customer feedback needs to be quick and help customers understand the impact of any delay.

In summary, you can’t be everywhere, but you can be intentional about where you are and why, and that’s what solves the problem.