A new study by Torben Pedersen (Department of Management and Technology of the Bocconi University of Milan) provides three suggestions on how to improve the performance of a widely used work system: Multi-project work (MPW). Simply put, MPW is a work system where employees work on multiple projects at the same time.
Its popularity is so increasing that recent studies calculate that 80% of employees use MPW and that 84% of project-based organizations adopt MPW as their standard work system. ‘double-edged sword, because it has both advantages and costs.
The benefits of eliminating downtime
In their latest article in the Strategic Management Journal, Pedersen and his co-authors Anatoli Colicev and Tuuli Hakkarainen (both former Bocconi professors, now at the University of Liverpool) list the reduction in employee downtime as one of the advantages, as multiple projects make it possible to bridge any gaps, and the possibility of developing more effective work practices, to be used repeatedly.
The costs include the so-called “residual attention” (thoughts about a previous project that persist and intrude while another is being carried out) and the costs of cognitive set-up, that is the mental and psychic effort necessary to re-immerse oneself in the tasks, in the people, roles, problems, and operations of another project context. The authors use a dataset on new product development projects in a multinational organization, containing 9,649 employee-month-project observations (across 42 projects and 580 employees ) and conclude that the relationship between the number of projects people are engaged in and their performance takes an inverted U shape: performance improves up to a certain point, reaches a plateau and, therefore, begins to decline.
Performance was measured in terms of timeliness. Projects involve deadlines and performance is as much better as deadlines are met. “It may be even more interesting – says Pedersen – the fact that we have also found three levers that companies can use to increase the benefits of MPW or reduce its costs. costs “.