In the past, most project management books have focused on managing one project, but in today’s increasingly busy and stressful world, it has become necessary to calmly and efficiently manage more than one project—often several projects—successfully at the same time. This learned skill is valuable not only for project managers, but also for anyone responsible for the successful outcome of multiple projects, whether it is at the office or in the home! Dobson says that you must first have a strong foundation in time management and priority setting, then introduces the concept of Portfolio Management to timeline multiple projects, determine their resource requirements, and handle emergencies, putting you in charge for possibly the first time in your life!

The Juggler’s Guide to Managing Multiple Projects does not forget the paperwork. Dobson supplies examples of business-tested forms, charts, logs, tables, and worksheets—everything project managers need to crash, level, analyze, plan, and control tasks. Forms were never better explained or illustrated. To ensure creative success, Dobson adds tips, shortcuts, and tricks of the project management trade with each example.

Michael uses clear reasoning and definitions backed up by proven methods eg. PERT and CPM. He defines projects into portfolios and gives sound analysis for scoping and reasoning. The book distinguishes the juggling between Task-Orientated Project Portfolios, Independent Project Portfolios and Inter-Dependent Project Portfolios.

This book even covers the distinction between urgency and priority which is a issue for all Project Managers.

Excellent reading and comparatively light reading for a book rich in information.

8 of 8 found the following review helpful:


Great job of identifying types of multiple projects.  Apr 07, 2003 By Harinath Thummalapalli
We have all at one point or another in our Project Management careers, dealt with the issue of managing multiple projects. There is limited knowledge out there on how to manage multiple projects. Dobson starts out by identifying three different types of situations in which you may be managing multiple projects.

The first situation which he labels as 'Task Oriented Project Portfolio' deals with multiple projects that are very short in duration (a few hours of 1-2 days at most). The basic problem in this situation could be that there are a lot of these small projects and the PM has a full-time responsibilities on top of these projects.

The second situation is labeled 'Independent Project Portfolio' where there are a lot of similar type projects that are not related (no dependencies between the projects). The problem here is resource availability that is fixed but there ends the dependencies between the projects.

The third situation is called 'Interdependent Project Portfolio' where there are large projects with many small projects identified as tasks in the large projects. Here, the main problem is the different kinds of expertise that is demanded of the resources under the overall time constraints. An example of a move is utilized where it is a large project with many sub-projects that have time dependencies but are not related in content (computer setup, ordering utilities etc.).

Entrepreneurs in start up companies especially run into the first situation where there are so many of these small projects that the business owner is just plain overwhelmed. I have recently found myself in this situation and I was very thankful to read Dobson's book and apply the simple techniques and worksheets provided in the book.

Dobson briefly develops the circumstances surrounding each type of multiple project scenario and provides techniques and worksheets that a PM can use to manage in each situation. He also creates new definitions that apply in these individual scenarios.

This is not an in-depth treatment of the complexities involved in handling multiple projects. The book is only about 134 pages long. It is an expensive book but I would highly recommend any serious project manager to at least borrow the book from some PM library that you may have access to. Dobson also spends almost half the short book on explaining simple project management concepts like WBS, Gantt Charts, etc. that most project managers are already familiar with. Hence it makes for a very quick but valuable read. Don't miss out on these neat techniques. The ROI is very high.

3 of 3 found the following review helpful:


Best short intro to handling one or more projects.  Sep 19, 2005 By Richard E. Wahlberg
The tools you need for one or more projects are there. This is one of the handful of PM books that I have read more than once and one of the very few that get loaned out on a regular basis.

It is not a comprehensive book, but if you are inexperienced and need to ramp up quick, this book gives you the basics.

Even experts will find the templates useful.

It's a short book so it is long on practice and short on theory. Don't underestimate it's value though, it may be brief, but it is concise and most of all of immediate practical use to project managers, or managers with multiple tasks. Like, who doesn't have multiple tasks...

5 of 7 found the following review helpful:


Not worthy of your time and money  Mar 19, 2004
This work sheds very little light on the real work of managing project portfolios. Way too much of the text describes basic PM tools such as gantt charts, network diagrams, and work breakdown structures that any decent project manager already knows. Further, use of such tools by themselves does not make a portfolio manager...managing of with organizational strategies/goals and proper management of sponsor and major stakeholder expectations are equally, if not more, important at this level - and this book completely misses this.


The Jugglers Guide to Managing Multiple Projects  Jul 19, 2010 By Leslie H. Garlin
I instruct project management programs and was looking to identify a book I could recommend to my students about managing multiple projects. This book has very relevant information to that process and I will list it as a source for additional reading.

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