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I was just curious this morning as to the number of concurrent projects that most people are working on.

I think for this we can define the projects as whatever causes you to have to switch the scope of your thinking to be able to work on it. For example going from the Business Objects over to a back-end data service into a UI. Feel free to discuss how having to switch frequently effects your throughput or mood or whatever.

I currently work in a role as a Project Manager/Development Lead and I've begun to get stretched across multiple projects (due to a multitude of factors) and it made me wonder about this.

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13 Answers

up vote 8 down vote

It varies for me.... sometimes it's none, sometimes its up to 4 or so. Don't think I've ever had more than 4 though.

I am currently only working on one project, however I am expected to stop and take care of help desk calls as they come in and am often interrupted to work on a side projects which can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days away from the main project.

Overall I think I spend half my time on my main project and the other half of my time answering help desk calls, fixing other programs, and building reports and/or small web apps which users say they need to have done ASAP.

To be fair I am part of a small team... only 3 people. Still, it really annoys me when I'm in the zone and someone interrupts me because there is a report they absolutely have to have done by the next day, or a program which isn't working the way it should and they absolutely need to have it fixed ASAP. By the time I get back to where I was, I often have forgotten what I was doing or where I was going and it takes me a few minutes to figure it out all over again.

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+1 Amen; I've been there. Eventually I persuaded the owner that they had to hire a support person to run interference. – Robert Harvey Nov 22 '10 at 17:59
up vote 6 down vote
  • 1 Big project at work : nothing special, just the current project I'm working on.
  • 1 Big project at home : something that can become really useful or that I could build a company on.
  • 1 Toy project at home : something to play with some concepts or technologies.

I also have a paper-comic project and a webcomic project. They don't have the same rythm of production( and I'm still bad at the webcomic as it require regularity).

I tried to focus on one project only at home but it's hard because I'm able to think about it a lot in the day but once home it's harder (because I'm exausted). That said, I can still work by just applying what I thought about in the day.

I also always tend to get a "toy" project (even sometimes in comics) because it help with experimentation and just creating something for "fun". Once you decided a project to be serious, it's less fun if you can't work on it during the day.

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How do you manage? I've got ideas for a toy project and a big project to be done at home and I keep ending up with no significant progress on either one. So I had to pick one and scrap/postpone the other. But I would like to do both while they're still fresh in my mind. – Jonn Nov 23 '10 at 13:57
First, the toy project have to be small scale. For example my toy project is a shoot-them-up (code.google.com/p/radiant-laser-cross) that is very abstract, and I don't even plan to get to a final release point. Just try to implement some system sometimes. Second, make a TODO list ( code.google.com/p/radiant-laser-cross/source/browse/… ). The point is to be able to jump in at any time and just try to implement one or two tasks of your todolist. – Klaim Nov 23 '10 at 14:36
If you are able to do that, you can, like me, jump in the toy project when you'd have too much of the big project. I work a lot on the big project but after two months of working only on that - for example - I like to do something else with immediate (positive) feedback. THAT would be the imporant third point. Although, I organize the big project in a more serious way, that makes me work a lot on infrastructure while the toy project is almost only running code. The big project have a TRAC website (because I'll need a team at some point) but the toy project have a simple todo list. – Klaim Nov 23 '10 at 14:39
That said, that don't make me the more efficient (in projects out per year) developer out there. I certainly spend a lot of time in just exploring different ways to implement some systems. Still, I tried a lot of different ways to manage my personal projects and this one is the more stable for me (big project - hard part / small project - soft part). That said, I might allocate more free time than a lot of people on my personal projects, so I might not be a good example. I'm surprise so much people voted for my answer. I just tried to be honest with how I'm doing this currently. – Klaim Nov 23 '10 at 14:42
Big projects at home mean I'm bored at work and about to leave. Last big home project was 10 years ago and nothing on the horizon. – McTrousers Jan 15 '11 at 5:41
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up vote 2 down vote

I decided to limit myself on 2 (two) well sized projects and delegate completely or freeze the rest. Having several irons in the fire = not good.

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up vote 2 down vote

One.

Multitasking Gets You There Later, even though it may look and even feel like you're doing more. And you may indeed be doing more, but the point is that doing and getting done are quite different animals.

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Are you self employed, or do you have an employer that understands this concept? I agree with the fact that working on 4 things takes a lot longer to complete all of them than doing them in order, but the owner of the firm I work for just keeps taking projects and pushing them all on top of me to get people working on. – msarchet Nov 22 '10 at 17:32
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I work for an employer who's luckily smart enough to get this. "Just keeps taking projects and pushing them all" is false economy, no matter how wide-spread. Prioritization should be managers' first priority (pun intended), but unfortunately they often tend to forget it when under pressure. – Joonas Pulakka Nov 22 '10 at 17:37
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Multitasking as a person is just like multitasking in a computer with one core. If you have a process that's IO bound for a while, you can benefit from multitasking, but if you're CPU bound, multitasking is less efficient. So if you can start a project and then you have to wait for something for two weeks, you should switch to another project. On the other hand, you shouldn't just spend one day on one project and the next on another just to "get more done". – Scott Whitlock Nov 23 '10 at 11:20
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@Scott: Agreed: if you can't proceed because you're waiting for something critical, then you of course should do something else than just sit and wait for two weeks. Maybe another project, but it might also be a good studying / learning / sharpening your tools slot. – Joonas Pulakka Nov 23 '10 at 11:44
up vote 1 down vote

Two, if you only count programs for which I'm being paid.

Add in personal projects, and I'm up to maybe 5?

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I think that personal projects count – msarchet Nov 22 '10 at 16:32
up vote 1 down vote

One that get's all my attention and excitement and 3 or 4 that I grudgingly plod along with.

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up vote 0 down vote

For work, just one at the moment. Having said that, it's a massive project to redo one of my department's major internal applications. Part of the major change with this is to open it up to at least 83 other organizations that work with us.

As for personal projects, also just one... I've been playing far too many computer games to do more than that.

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up vote 0 down vote

I work as an independent contractor/consultant, and almost always have multiple projects going on. But right now I'm a bit overloaded: my main contract is an embedded cellular system using C on an 8051. Also doing another embedded project (iPhone dongle) using C on a HCS08. Plus an embedded Linux video project on a TMS320DM365 with some additional HCS08s.

Those three are my main focus, but in addition I am doing maintenance on a large PHP website (600 pages) I wrote a while back, adding features to a telephony project which uses a dsPIC33F, and just this morning got a new project making changes to a Delphi Windows program. So six active clients altogether.

I also designed the hardware for the four embedded projects I'm currently writing firmware for and laid out one of the PCBs myself.

I have a shareware program that needs updating but I've put that on hold.

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up vote 0 down vote

Usually I work on one main project and get the odd additional task when I can add my special abilities to another project, but then it's mostly more of the same stuff I do already and no real change of "scope of thinking". In my free time I work on 1 - 2 more projects (mostly) just for fun. Here is where the fun starts and where I enjoy doing different stuff. So on average I would say it's 2-3 different kind of projects.

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up vote 0 down vote

One project that is in development and many many more that I am responsible for maintaining. This tends to the be the norm for me, one thing thats new that I'm working on plus whatever bug fixes I need to complete on things I've finished developing. Typically the bug fixes take precedence over what is currently in development.

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up vote 0 down vote

Two. I find it difficult to handle two Projects at a time.

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up vote 0 down vote

I've often got a main project and one or two that I dip in to when small changes are required.

At the same time, I've and enough personal (non-paid) projects to keep the entire staff of Microsoft busy for a decade, although most are still in the "good idea" stage.

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up vote 0 down vote

Two, one big project at work and another one (mostly maintenance and extensions of an system already in production) in my moonlightning time.

In my previous job, I had to work on 3 or more projects concurrently, rapidly switching as new requirements poured in, which caused a lot of stress and little satisfaction, obviously.

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