Does this workload seem right?

Question

I'm a project director at a custom lighting company. There are 2 project managers and 2 project coordinators under me. I alone manage 15 clients equaling 2.5 million in earnings in 6 months. I manage the team and attend every meeting = 3 hours a day. The other PM's have between 45 and 20 clients each between 500,000 and 3,000,000 earnings. I feel like this is major overload but the owners think this is a walk in the park. Mind you these are all custom projects with constant changes. Does this seem normal? I really want to know if my team is legitimately burnt out.

Thanks

Answer 1

The actual workload is not reduced to a number of customers and a projects. On my last job we had a PM's with one-two customer only because they were very hard to work with, and they were really burning alive. And some of the PM's had 15 projects with bigger overall budget, but customers were very adequate, projects simple and steady, and they don't seemed stressed at all.

Answer 2

As Project Director you should have the information to answer this.

Ask yourself:

• Are your subordinates managing to get to each of their projects every week?
  • If not, why not?

• Are your subordinates constantly busy with their projects?

  • Or do they spend more than fair amounts of time at the water cooler?

• Are all projects being managed properly?

  • If not, is it because of overload or because of mismanagement?

It's not the quantity of projects nor the budget. It's the amount of time each project needs.