The Impact of Multi- Tasking on Performance
(Author’s name)
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Table of Contents
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….. 3
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………… 3
Literature review……………………………………………………………………….5
Performance measures …………………………………………………………………5
Studies on impacts of multitasking ……………………………………………………8
Organizational review………………………………………………………………….13
Conclusion and limitations……………………………………………………………..16
References ……………………………………………………………………………..17
Abstract
I have always held the belief that I produce the worst results when I have been engaged in more than three or four projects all going on at the same period of time. I believe this is usually the case because I do not have enough time to plan adequately what I am supposed to do early. Additionally, I have found out that following to the startup of a technical project, I usually move right to the next project without spending some time to collect enough information and analyze what areas need to be improved of the finished project. Currently, I have more than one project that has been assigned to me, which I have to complete within a certain amount of time. I took the option of multitasking because it I thought that this was the only way to finish the projects within the allocated time. In this paper, I will take up the task of finding out how multitasking can affect negatively the overall performance of a project and the learning experience quality at the end of the project. The research question in this case, therefore, is whether there is a relationship that exists between the overall performance of a project manager and the number of technical projects undertaken.
Key words; multi- tasking, projects, performance measures, technical project
Introduction
The term multitasking has been commonly used in business and project management to describe the act of putting one’s focus on more than one projects at a given time. Multitasking is taken by many as a survival tactic that some adopt to cope with the flood of information going their way. Generally, multitasking is a skill everyone has to have as life can impose on an individual numerous things needing their attention. Project management is no different from these real- life situations. Actually project managers are at times considered to be the key individuals who considering the amount of time they have to dedicate to multiple projects in their firms and their employees. Human beings have always possessed the ability to multitask and attend to a number of things at once, since the ancient times (Adamczyk & Bailey, 2004).
However, the phenomenon of multitasking has without a doubt reached a new level with the introduction and innovation of technology. Although many facets of an individual’s networked life have remained untouched by scientific research, there is enough evidence from scientific studies on how the brain manages multitasking; and basically, a lot of this evidence indicates that the brain does not have enough capacity to effectively manage and cope with more than one task. As it follows, when one thinks that they are multitasking just because they can burn a cd and listen to music at the same time they are wrong, because all they are really doing toggling among these tasks other than processing them simultaneously (Adcock, et al.,2008).
The toggling of actions or the switching of one’s attention between tasks occurs in the area of the brain located behind the forehead and it is referred to as the Brodmann’s area in the anterior prefrontal cortex of the brain. According to functional magnetic resonance imaging done by Grafman and his colleagues, the frontal lobes of this area are what are used to maintain and achieve long- term goals while the anterior part of the area is what allows an individual to leave a task when is incomplete and return to it later and continue from where they left. According to these studies, these two parts of the brain imposes on humans some forms of multitasking capabilities that are not really multitasking but sequential processing capabilities (Adcock, et al., 2008).
The ability of multitasking in sequential processing has been indicated to be the highest among young adults and to be the lowest among children and older adults. However, multiprocessing has limits even among young people. When people try to multitask or perform two or more tasks at the same time or alternate between them rapidly, the chances of them obtaining errors increases, and in most case, it takes more time, usually double or more, to get these tasks done than it would if the tasks were performed individually or sequentially. The bottom line of these studies, therefore, is that there will e decreased efficiency, and validity of results of a project that was completed or multitasked with another, compared to the results of a project done individually (Clifford & Altmann, 2004).
Literature Review
Performance measures
It is essential for a company to implement a project management value and performance measurement system to use in the measurement of performance of the project management team and the value of the performance as it helps a company achieve a number of goals. Some of these goals include identifying and pointing out the impacts of the business of implementing and using initiatives for improving management, to compare costs to benefits of these improvement initiatives, to determine if the improvement skills of the project management are attaining its set objectives and to help in the marketing and selling of future improvement initiatives. These goals are dependent on the determination of the value of utilizing an improvement initiative in project management in a firm (Schacter, 2002).
This value can be determined by the indication that there is some improvement in one or more of these measures with time. The identification and choosing of these measures has been indicated as one of the key factors in implementing a successful measurement system for project management value. One of the main reasons why firms conduct or measure performance of their project teams is to help them make decisions to implement changes that will and can improve the performance of project management. For example, measures of project management are used to provide knowledge and information to managers that can be used by managers to exert control or to manage that project (Schacter, 2002).
The measures, however, must be appropriate to the level of the organization that can rapidly implement and cause change depending on the information it obtains and learns for it to control the performance of the ongoing project- the measurement of the value of the project that has been earned will give essential information regarding the performance of the project at hand, which will give managers an opportunity to make decisions that are critical to bring the project to a successful completion. Additionally, the measures must be obtained often and continuously, preferably at a weekly basis, depending on the amount of time the project will take (Schacter, 2002).
There are numerous ways through which an organization can measure the success of a project management. Some of these include return on investment, productivity and cost of quality. The return on investment value determines the return in percentage for each dollar invested in the project. This is a good measurement of whether the project management was successful and beneficial or whether it resulted to a loss. Productivity on the other and can be defined as the output a project produces per input unit. This measurement tells one whether they are getting back their money’s worth from the inputs invested in the project or not. Cost of quality is the amount of money lost by a business because its services and products were not produced in the right manner. Other measurements of successful project management include such things as cost performance, schedule performance, cycle time, requirements performance, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, strategic business goals and alignment (DeMarco & Lister, 1999).
Key success indicators or what are commonly referred to as key performance indicators cab also be used by a company to determine and measure its progress towards the achievement of the goals set by the organization. After a firm has analyzed and determined its mission and identified the entities and stakeholders to be involved in the mission and the goals of the project, it needs to measure its performance and progress toward the achievement of these goals. These are what are referred to as key performance indicators. They are also the quantifiable measurements that have been agreed on before the start of the project, and that which show the critical success factors of the company. They are different from organization to organization. However, whatever key performance indicators a company chooses to use, they must be able to show what the goals of that company are, and they also must be measurable, or quantifiable. In most cases, these indicators are considerations on a long- term basis. Therefore, their definitions and the ways of measuring them are constant over a long period of time; however, the goals of a company might change (Dismukes, Loukopoulos & Jobe, 2001).
The benefits of measuring performance of a project are many. For example performance measurement sets standards and goals, it detects and corrects problems, describes, manages, and improves project processes, and it also helps in documenting accomplishments. Other benefits include helping project managers gain insights into their projects and make decisions and judgments about the efficiency and the effectiveness of their plans, processes, programs and their team members. It also determines whether companies are achieving and working towards attaining their goals and meeting their strategic goals that must also be focused on the customers. Performance measurement also provides results that are measurable to show progress towards the company objectives and goals. Further, performance measurement determines the effectiveness of a project manager’s team, department and even company. These are all essential measurements that can be used to determine whether the project is heading to the right direction or whether changes need to be made to change the direction of the project to a more successful completion (Dismukes, Loukopoulos & Jobe, 2001).
Studies on impacts of multitasking
In most environments for projects multitasking is adopted as a way of life. This often disregarded and ignored significant aspect, often displayed as a skill that is desirable, has become one of the most essential causes of long durations of the project, late projects, and low outputs of the projects. At the same time, the facet is also one of the least understood facets in project management. For firms where the success of projects is of strategic essentiality, the stakes of understanding this aspect becomes extremely high. Whether it is in bringing or introducing new products in the market or delivering their services and goods or upgrading or expanding their operations with new systems, facilities, and capabilities, the financial effects of having the ability to reduce project costs and durations raise the volume of projects that have been completed, is enormous. Therefore, understanding how this usually overlooked aspect of multitasking is of critical significance to companies is essential (Gasser & Palfrey, 2009).
Multitasking is described as the act of bringing a task to a halt before it is completed and moving on to another task; the term thrashing is usually used in soft ware development to mean the same thing. When a task is stopped and then started there is usually the immediate impact of lost and decreased efficiency. This is because each time an individual stops a task and has restart it, time is needed for them to become familiar again with the details of the project and reset themselves in where they were in the task before they stopped. This can be exemplified by the physical-set ups usually done on machines in production. Each time a machine is torn down to do another task, one usually has to set it up to run as it did before (Gasser & Palfrey, 2009).
While the loss in efficiency is not and should not be ignored, especially when it comes to knowledge projects, it is far from the most essential reason multitasking is considered damaging to projects. What usually happens when a project is interrupted or stopped is that its completion gets affected and becomes delayed. Most project managers and other individuals involved in projects would agree that it is not significant when a task gets finished, it is only essential when the project gets finished. The following diagrams can explain this statement better (Gasser & Palfrey, 2009).
The diagram shows three tasks; A, B, and C that a certain company has to accomplish. These tasks are of three different projects. Task A must be finished within 10 days, B in 20 and C in 30 days.
If the project team manager stops and starts another task, even once during the span of the project, the completion time or duration of the task extends quickly as it is shown in the next diagram. Task A finishing duration extends to 20 days instead of 10 B extends to 25 and C has a chance to finish in 30 days.
The delays observed in the completion of Tasks A and B translates to the delays that were experienced on the downstream tasks the projects had, which can now commence at day 20 for A and 25 for B. the impact on task A is as follows;
Even in small projects like the one illustrated here, with only four tasks and one multitasking instance, there is a chance of delivering a project that has been significantly delayed. It is clear from the illustrations how more likely it is to have several or even more scenarios of multitasking in a project which can lead to delays to build up and lengthens the durations of the project significantly (Gasser & Palfrey, 2009).
In numerous firms, the effects of multitasking are hidden by the fact that despite of many occurrences many projects still get completed within the allocated time. While it is good to have this kind of reliability, it is also essential to note that such things mask the even more critical opportunity to cut the durations of a project considerably. If projects are delivered close or on time, and multitasking occurrences are there, it only indicates that the estimates of the tasks utilized in the project plan are inflated significantly. This is to mean that managers are planning for time that has been lost as a result of multitasking because this is the only way that time has been lost can be redeemed. As it follows, minimizing multitasking scenarios offers the project managers a chance to cut project durations that had been planned without affecting the performance delivery; and the company gets in a better position to rap benefits of delivering more projects at an increased rate (Goldratt, 1997).
A study wanting to investigate the effects of multitasking on projects put project managers, teams and executives through a simple simulation of a project game through the use of beads; first with the factor of multitasking and then without it. The study got results that indicated that the time or duration of completing each of the two projects was split in half giving them an increased ability to double their output, and reduce individual times by half, by simply eliminating the factor of multitasking. The same was found to happen when companies do away with multitasking in their own tasks and projects (Goldratt, 1997).
Another study argued that agile projects, especially when a company is starting their agile transition, can have numerous challenges. Some of these problems have to do with technical problems like the project taking too long or having automated tests that are not sufficient to determine whether the changes on a project are helping or hurting the project. However, there is one insidious problem that affects management when numerous teams transition to agile; and when the project team is meant to work on numerous projects. At times, a team might realize this challenge and address it during their retrospectives, but if the team has been used to multitasking it might be difficult to know there is a problem. There are several reasons why project managers ask their team members to multitask even with the knowledge that they can slow the project down. One reason is that managers are used to multitasking and they forget that technical work is not the same as their work and that technical teams cannot multitask effectively and efficiently. The other reason is because they usually have numerous projects that they have to complete within a given duration (Walus, 2008).
The main reason why most company owners require managers to oversee their projects is because of the danger of uncertainty. How a company manages uncertainty is central to the improvement of the performance of the project- getting projects done and completed with reliability that is improved of delivering the projects at the agreed dates, and getting these projects done quickly. The critical chain scheduling and buffer management is one extremely common approach commonly used in project management to provide project managers with mechanisms to allow them a complete and all- round view of the projects (Gonzalez, 2006).
This mechanism protects and identifies what parts of the project are essential from uncertainties, and through this, it helps manager avoid key negative effects on the progress of the project. As it follows, project managers, as well as, teams need to focus more on assuring that the project completes within the accepted dates. The critical chain approach according to a number for professionals is one of the most essential breakthroughs in management of projects since the introduction of its governing concept. The approach is strongly set against bad or damaging multitasking. This kind of multitasking takes place when certain resources continuously change from one activity to another and from one project to another. It is has been proved that such switching can result to mechanical paths that can significantly lower the outputs of a project and increase the coordination costs and the set up (Gonzalez, 2006).
Multitasking has been indicated to be most common and detrimental in cases where one is involved with more than one project. It has been showed in numerous studies that multitasking different resources and projects can have numerous negative impacts on the completion date performance of most of the projects. The avoidance of multitasking, therefore, has been indicated to have significant beneficial effects on the project by reducing the costs of the project and by speeding up the completion time of the project. Also it has been indicated that scheduling more than one project under constraints of resources can impose on an organization numerous computational challenges. In practice, it has been argued that only heuristics are available to reduce the durations of multiple projects under conflicts of resources (Hazlehurst, 2003).
Organizational Review
As it has already been indicated much of the work I have accomplished after multitasking has always been my worst jobs. After the reviewing of the literature, it was found that the main reason why my projects do not produce desirable outcomes when I multitask them s because multitasking generally makes me divide my focus among the numerous projects and I end up hurrying up some projects because of time constraints. It was found from the review of literature that multitasking technical projects almost always produces results that are undesirable. Also, it was found that projects that are coupled with others are never completed within the allocated time. As a result, I came to realize that the way I handle my company’s projects is the wrong way. Most of the time, I usually move right to the next new project without having to analyze and collect enough information to improve the completed project. In the study, I found a number of ways through which I can improve the outcomes of my projects and how I can improve my general performance as a project manager. Some of these ways will be listed below, in addition to ways my company, as well as, other companies can improve performance and value of their projects.
The costs of multitasking on the projects of a company have been well illustrated; with the most significant effect having to do with wastage of time and the delay of delivery of the completed projects. However, as it has been noted, most jobs require an individual to have abilities to multitask. So what can one do to ensure that the results are not affected by multi- tasking some projects? One way that has been found to be effective in achieving this is minimizing the strain placed on the project teams. There are few ways through which a project manager can reduce the stress placed on his team members and in doing so increase the success of a project. I found that I can do the same with our organization since the question of eliminating multitasking completely was out of question. One way to reduce stress is to prioritize work. It is essential for one to realize that they are never going to accomplish any two tasks concurrently. Given the workload placed on project teams at times, it is impossible to get all things complete. It is, therefore, of paramount importance that work and tasks be done according to project priority. The prioritization, however, must be done after comprehensive consultation with the project (Newbold, 1998).
Another way I can improve performance of my organization’s projects is by getting a high- level view of the work load of each team member. As a project manager, I should be able to tell what each one of my members is doing and what their routine is by getting each one of them to send in their rolling work plans. The plan must show the tasks of each member and the estimates of the duration of time to be spend on those tasks. As it was found, this can be extremely effective in giving the project manager a high level view of their team member’s workload and it is extremely helpful in alerting the manager of potential problems with multitasking, and, as a result, these problems can be addressed early enough to prevent inconveniencing the project (Newbold, 1998).
The project manager can also align or arrange task switches with the end of the week or even day. This can encourage individuals to work on more than one task per day or a week. This way, the project manager can plan to have the task switches happen at the end of each day, hence, giving the team members time to get their minds to familiarize themselves with the next tasks. As a lot of troubles with multitasking results from wastage of time, which occurs as a result of switching between projects, this can effectively reduce the time each team member requires to familiarize themselves with a new project, and, thereby reduce the amount of time a project takes to get completed (Newbold, 1998).
To improve the efficiency of a project, the manager can also insist and develop working hours that are reasonable or decent. While it is okay to work overtime at times, especially when the team has to beat deadlines, it is definitely not okay for the project manager to expect or even impose working hours that are unreasonable over a sustained period of time. This is because extended and unreasonable working hours can affect the productivity of the team and their motivation. This can always lead to decreased coordination and projects that are delayed or even projects whose outcomes are undesirable or unsuccessful. Working hours and the motivation of the team are, therefore, significant and indispensable when it comes to the successful completion of a project (Newbold, 1998).
Distracters like long and unnecessary meetings are also other factors that can negatively affect the completion of a project. A manager must be able to realize this and minimize or eliminate all of the possible and unnecessary distracters that can stress his team to ensure of a timely and successful completion of projects. Providing support and guidance to the team is also another critical factor to the successful completion a project. In some case, a manager might need to act as a filter preventing any unwanted distractions into the project but at other times they might need to let their guard down and answer some high- level questions directed to them by their team members, and provide them with guidance support whenever they need it. However, this does not mean that they have to become an obstacle to their workers by constantly interfering and interrupting their work. It is fair to show one’s workers that you have confidence in them and their abilities, because this way they feel more motivated and work harder (Newbold, 1998). With all these recommendations, it is possible for a team leader to minimize multitasking in a project and increase the performance and success of the project.
Conclusion and Limitations
One of the things that was noticed during the study was that most researches did not clearly point out whether multitasking should completely be done away with or not in project management. What was common was that most studies indicated that multitasking can be detrimental to the outcomes of a project. It would be more beneficial if the studies were more to the point on what should be done with this significant facet of management. However, several essential things were learned from the study, with the most significant lesson being that multitasking in technical projects almost usually results to decreased productivity and success of the projects. It was seen, however, that the effects caused by multitasking can be significantly reduced if the manager reduces the stress levels in his project team members. Some ways of achieving this included such things as establishing reasonable working hours and being supportive of the team members.
References
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