Multi-project management: what coordinating 15 workstreams taught me about prioritisation

Coordinating one project requires rigour. Coordinating fifteen simultaneously requires attention management - otherwise everything becomes urgent, and nothing is actually a priority.

The rule that changes everything: prioritise between projects, not only within a project

Most prioritisation methods (MoSCoW, RICE...) apply inside a single project. At portfolio scale, the real question is different: which project deserves my attention this week, and which one can run autonomously?

Three criteria for deciding

1. The level of unaddressed risk (not the level of progress)
2. The maturity of the team in place: a seasoned team needs less presence
3. The cost of silence: some projects degrade quickly without arbitration, others do not

What this means in practice

I do not distribute my time equally across the 15 projects. I distribute it according to actual risk, which means some workstreams barely see me, and others get far more attention than their apparent size would justify.

Prioritisation at portfolio scale is not an enlarged version of single-project prioritisation. It is a different exercise, one that requires accepting the deliberate, temporary neglect of certain workstreams.