We have more approved projects than people to deliver them. What should leadership do?
Portfolio overloadPrioritize and sequence work against real organizational capacity. Approval should not imply immediate start when the same scarce people are needed by multiple initiatives.
What to do now
- Create a consolidated demand view
- Compare demand with skill-based capacity
- Identify strategic and mandatory priorities
- Pause or sequence lower-priority starts
When to escalate
Escalate when
Leadership will not resolve a capacity conflict affecting essential outcomes.
Who decides
The portfolio decision authority
Example
The portfolio delays two initiatives to protect a mandatory rollout and shared specialist capacity.
Mistake to avoid
Starting everything and expecting project managers to solve the overload individually.
Prevent a repeat
Review whether active commitments fit available capacity and current priorities rather than just tracking project counts.
Suggested ApprovedFlow setup
- Projects
- Resources
- Documents
- Approvals
Use project and capacity records to support portfolio decisions, then record approved priorities and consequences explicitly. See the platform
Related cases
- Projects compete for the same users during rollout. What should we coordinate?Change-capacity overload
- The same dependency appears in many project plans. Who should own it?Shared dependency governance
- Meetings leave no time for focused work. What can we remove?Coordination overload
- How many project KPIs should we track?Metric overload