How to Manage Multiple Projects: Excel, Jira, Trello, and Other Tools

Managing multiple projects can sometimes feel like you're trying to juggle fire—exciting but full of risks. Imagine this: you're the captain of a busy ship navigating stormy seas, where each project is an island waiting to be discovered. Each island has its own terrain, treasures, and hidden challenges. In this journey, the secret to success lies in not just having a map, but in knowing which tools can help you chart your course.

Why Mastering Multiple Projects Matters

Picture a day in the life of a project manager: morning emails, unexpected client calls, and team huddles that quickly turn into crisis meetings. The art of managing multiple projects isn’t about merely staying afloat—it’s about steering your vessel through turbulent waters while ensuring every crew member is on board and every island is explored. Whether you're orchestrating product launches, software development sprints, or cross-departmental initiatives, the ability to juggle various priorities and deadlines becomes your most valuable asset.

Strategic Insights for Managing Multiple Projects

Let's explore how you can navigate your projects with precision, even when the seas get rough.

1. Prioritization Techniques

The first challenge in managing multiple projects is deciding where to head first. Prioritization is the key to ensuring you're not sailing in circles, lost at sea. For you, as a project manager, this means considering both the impact and urgency of each project. 

There are plenty of tools for this, from simple priority matrices to scoring systems, but the idea is to rank your projects based on their significance. Some projects will be high-impact—these require more immediate attention. Others might be more urgent but less impactful. Your job is to balance both, ensuring that the most critical projects aren’t delayed because of less pressing ones.

Here are the most popular prioritization techniques:

• MoSCoW Method. This technique divides tasks into categories—Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won't Have—and helps you focus on what's most important.
• Eisenhower Matrix. Tasks are categorized by urgency and importance. This allows you to quickly address high-priority tasks while ensuring less urgent ones don’t get neglected.
• Value vs. Effort Matrix. This technique evaluates projects based on their potential value and the effort required, helping you prioritize high-value, low-effort projects.

2. Time and Resource Management

Consider each project as a ship, and your resources as the crew. You want to ensure you’re not putting too many people on one project and leaving another stranded. Use tools to allocate resources effectively—whether it's assigning tasks to the right team members or balancing workloads to avoid burnouts. And just as a captain accounts for unpredictable weather, always leave room for buffer time in case something doesn’t go as planned. This way, you’re prepared for the unexpected, and the journey remains smooth.

Best tools for resource management:

• Planyway. Planyway allows you to distribute tasks and keep track of team members’ workloads across multiple projects.
• Monday.com. This tool offers a clear overview of tasks, workloads, and deadlines, enabling better resource allocation.
• Asana. Asana allows you to visualize project timelines, track resources, and collaborate seamlessly.

3. Effective Communication

Effective communication isn’t just about sending messages or emails—it’s about ensuring everyone on the team understands the vision and their role in the journey. It’s about sharing the map, the course, and the timeline clearly and often.

This means holding regular check-ins with both the team and stakeholders. Updates aren’t just about reporting what’s done—it’s about checking if everyone understands where the ship is headed and what needs to be done next. It’s also about listening—are there new challenges on the horizon? Do some team members need additional support?

Top instruments for effective communication:

• Project Roadmap. Build a visual roadmap of your projects with Planyway to get a single view across all your initiatives to share with the team and other stakeholders and stay on the same page.
• Communication App. Explore Slack and Microsoft Teams to have a unified app for the whole team for real-time communication and instant feedback.
• Project Documentation. Make sure all project information is accessible for team mates and can be reached at any time. Explore Notion or Confluence to make it work.

4. Risk and Change Management

When managing multiple projects, it’s vital to have a clear view of potential risks and a plan to address them. Every project comes with its own set of potential bottlenecks—delayed approvals, resource shortages, or shifting client demands. The key is to spot these risks early and have contingency plans in place.

Consider this for risk and change management:

• Risk Register. A centralized document that tracks all identified risks, their impact, and the mitigation plans.
• Change Control Process. Establish a structured method for evaluating and implementing changes in scope, timelines, or resources.
• Risk Assessment Tools. Tools like RiskWatch or RISKalyze can help assess project risks and prioritize them effectively.

Planyway: The Ultimate App for Managing Multiple Projects

Planyway is a  perfect tool for the modern project manager who needs to manage a portfolio of projects across multiple teams. Whether you’re using Trello or Jira, Planyway transforms your project management workflow, offering a bird’s-eye view of everything happening at once.

Project Portfolio View

The Project Portfolio View is like having a vast map where you can see all your projects laid out before you—each one with its own timeline, progress markers, and resource needs. No more jumping from board to board, trying to piece together a scattered puzzle of tasks and deadlines. Instead, you get a comprehensive, visual overview of all your projects in one place.

The visual layout allows you to quickly assess how each project is progressing, identify any overlaps in deadlines, and spot potential bottlenecks in his workflow.

Workload Across Projects

Planyway allows you to see not just individual tasks, but the collective workload of your team across all projects. You can pull up the workload view, check who’s available, and reassign tasks as needed, ensuring that the project doesn’t fall behind while still maintaining balance across other initiatives.

Calendar View

The Calendar View feature is invaluable for managing overlapping deadlines and timelines. It provides a single, consolidated calendar where you can view all project deadlines, milestones, and meetings across multiple initiatives. This makes it easier to avoid over-scheduling or missing important dates.

Managing Multiple Projects with Excel Template

While it might not have the sleek, integrated features of specialized project management tools, Excel’s flexibility and simplicity make it a valuable resource for navigating the complexities of multiple projects. Here’s an example template structure that could work for managing multiple projects in Excel:

1. Project Overview Sheet (Dashboard)

This overview sheet should have one row per project, allowing you to track each project's status and basic information at a glance. You can use conditional formatting to highlight projects that are approaching deadlines or going over budget.

Columns:

• Project Name
• Project Status (Not Started, In Progress, Completed)
• Start Date
• End Date
• Priority (High, Medium, Low)
• Budget (Planned vs. Actual)
• Team Lead
• Current Phase/Task
• Completion Percentage
• Risk Level (Low, Medium, High)

2. Task Management Sheet

This sheet will contain all the tasks for each project. You can filter by project, due date, or status to focus on specific areas. You could also use data validation to make sure the status is chosen from a predefined list (e.g., Not Started, In Progress, Completed).

Columns:

• Project Name
• Task Name
• Assigned To
• Task Priority (High, Medium, Low)
• Start Date
• Due Date
• Status (Not Started, In Progress, Completed)
• Progress (Percentage)
• Dependencies (Links to other tasks that need to be completed first)
• Comments/Notes

3. Resource Allocation Sheet

This sheet helps you track which resources (team members) are assigned to which projects and tasks. You can identify workload imbalances and reallocate resources as needed.

Columns:

• Project Name
• Team Member
• Assigned Task
• Hours Allocated (e.g., 20 hours per week)
• Actual Hours Worked
• Workload Status (Overloaded, Balanced, Underutilized)

4. Budget Tracking Sheet

This sheet allows you to monitor your project budgets, helping you spot potential cost overruns early. You can use conditional formatting to highlight when the actual costs exceed the planned budget.

Columns:

• Project Name
• Planned Budget
• Actual Costs (Broken down by categories: Labor, Materials, etc.)
• Variance (Difference between Planned vs. Actual)
• Notes on Budget Issues

5. Gantt Chart View (Visual Timeline)

This sheet uses Excel's conditional formatting and bar chart features to create a visual timeline of all your projects and their associated tasks. You can map out the start and end dates of tasks in a Gantt chart format, which gives a great visual representation of project progress and dependencies.

Columns:

• Project Name
• Task Name
• Start Date
• End Date
• Duration (in days)
• Progress (Percentage)

Pros and Cons

• While Excel is a powerful tool, it’s important to know its limitations when managing multiple projects.
• No real-time collaboration
• One of the biggest drawbacks is that Excel isn’t designed for real-time collaboration. If your team is spread out across different locations, or if you need to constantly update project data, Excel can become cumbersome.
• Lack of scalability
• As your projects grow in complexity, your Excel sheets can become harder to manage. Adding new tasks, resources, and dependencies can lead to cluttered sheets that are difficult to read and navigate. And unlike specialized tools, Excel doesn’t provide automatic task tracking or notifications, meaning you have to manually update and check everything.

However, despite these limitations, Excel is still a fantastic tool for managing smaller or less complex projects where you don’t need real-time collaboration or intricate task management features. It’s a great choice for those who need flexibility and control over their project data but are willing to invest the time into maintaining and updating their spreadsheets.

The Final Chapter

Managing multiple projects is an art—a delicate balance between strategic planning, dynamic execution, and continuous learning. With the right methodologies and tools at your disposal, you can transform the chaos of overlapping deadlines and shifting priorities into a well-crafted narrative of success. Whether you’re steering the ship using Trello, mapping agile journeys in Jira, or recording every detail in Excel, remember that every project is a story waiting to be told.

About the Author

Sergey Koshevoy is the CEO of Planyway and a seasoned product manager, bringing a wealth of experience in project management and team collaboration tools. A fan of productivity techniques, Sergey is passionate about creating intuitive and efficient solutions that help teams work smarter and achieve their goals.