Search Forum Home   Project Management  Best Practices  Project Manager...  Project Manager Staffing in a Web/Digital Media Shop    11/21/2008 7:47:29 AM 934198 1 posts Project Manager Staffing in a Web/Digital Media Shop Hi All, One of the HR questions that I've seen consistently in my experience running web-based IT projects is: "How many project managers do we actually need?"  In the past, the only guidelines or best practices I've heard for articulating the answer have been pretty vague.  "Roughly 25% of the total project effort." or "PM's shouldn't manage more than 5-6 projects at any given time."  That last one is obviously dependent on the types of projects fielded by the PM organization. Does anyone have any best practices or approaches for quantitatively justifying project manager headcount for a project portolio? Thanks!  12/19/2008 4:26:31 PM 378137 12 posts Re: Project Manager Staffing in a Web/Digital Media Shop Hi, First of all, 3 naive questions: 1) Do your project managers participate in the creative process (leading the design, producing specs, etc...) or do they have only a management role.  2) How empowered are the other project resources ? Do you have lots of experienced seniors who "self-optimize" their work ?  Or do you have more junior people, which need much more directions and management help ?  3) Do your PM usually have a bundle of projects for the same customer (or in a very smilar situation) ?  Can they find some syntergies between different projects ?  Now my own ideas about the question (caution: personnal thoughts - no binding advices !): A) About the overall effort, I'd forsee roughly around 15-20%  of the overall effort for management, depending on the level of risks. If the manager is himself involved in the creative process, you've to add the required time to my figure.  B) Personnaly i'd find it almost impossible to manage 5-6 projects unless they are somehow linked together.  How can you keep an oversight ?  2-3 projects max at the same time, may be a 4th, if they are in different phase.  Of course, the number can be increased if on each project you have some senior developper who can take over part of the coordination activity... C) Your project managers should not be planned 100%. Management requires reactivity.  PM should always have one day a week free to be able to interveene the most burning project. D) Last but not the least:  you have to balance the PM effort against the overall schedule as well:  If 15% of the project means 20 mandays and the project lasts only one month, you may have some troubles giving him additional projects... Looking at your question I have the impression that you've a couple of PMs each having lots of projects.  Did you already do some statistics on your existing projects ?  If I were you, I'd start with this and compare with some performance indicators (financial result of individual projects, deviance to plan,  custommer satisfaction).    Kind regards Christophe  Page 1 of 1   Project Management  Best Practices  Project Manager... Flat View Tree View Oldest To Newest Newest To Oldest