Calling all Marketing Project Managers...

[GiselleSeoane]

Hello fellow Marketing Project Managers.  I'm curious about the average # of open projects other Marketing Project Managers out there manage at any given time.  For instance, I currently have a total of 30 projects in my care (23 current and 7 on hold where no work is being done, but regular check-ins with project sponsors to see if they can be re-opened with a new timeline).

So... is 30?

a. HOLY SMOKES, how are you not crazy?

b. YOU LUCKY DUCK, only 30!?!

c. YUP, sounds about right!

Asking for a friend. 🤣

[Halie_Baer]

I fall within the b) category, but I would say... 

1. Not all of our projects are actively being worked on at this moment (i.e. something was submitted in advance and doesn't require our attention yet.) 

2. I personally am not needing to touch every project - some land more on department leads to manage (i.e. social scheduling, small design updates, etc.) 

Lastly, whatever your load, it's valid. Whether it's 30 projects or hundreds, I takes a lot of brain space to keep it all straight! 

[MatthewLi1]

I feel like it varies a lot by the work level of each project. I know a few Project Managers who at my previous company were managing 10-30 projects and others that were just managing 2-3 multi-year projects. The Project Managers managing 10-30 projects were doing the same amount of work as those with just 2-3 larger projects, so it depends a lot on the project, urgency, time range, and stakeholder expectations.

For your case, I'd say it depends on how comfortable you feel managing that many projects, how you are using reports to pull status, and important information about these projects to share with your project sponsors.

[Lyndsy-Denk]

I agree with @MatthewLi1: Size of work matters. Some of us run one project for every little deliverables, some run monster projects with multiple deliverables. Even within that framework, one deliverable can be starkly different from the next even if the output is the same category (ex. one technical document could be a couple pages versus a novel).

If you don't already have standards for project builds, consider applying them so you can report on them. Think about T-shirt sizing, how you're going to build projects to count deliverables, etc. We're just diving into this exercise and it will be a slog, but we're excited to see what we'll be able to see for capacity planning.