4 Resource Leveling Techniques For Completing Projects On Time

If you are continually running into resource conflicts or overallocations on your projects, you might need to enlist a little trick called resource leveling.

There are several resource leveling techniques that you can turn to, depending on what kind of resource problem you're facing.

4 Resource Leveling Techniques

Here are four resource leveling techniques to test out next time you run into a problem when you're managing resources.

• Critical Path Method
• Critical Chain Method
• Fast Tracking
• Resource Crashing

You can also try a related technique known resource smoothing, which is best for situations in which your project timeline isn't as flexible.

Is the project managing you?

Sign up to get weekly insights, tips, and other helpful content from digital project management experts.

Your email*

This field is hidden when viewing the form

Consent

Yes, I want to sign up to receive regular emails filled with tips, expert insights, and more to build my PM practice.

By submitting you agree to receive occasional emails and acknowledge our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe at any time. Protected by reCAPTCHA; Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Email

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

1. Critical Path Method

The critical path method, or CPM, is used for calculating the project’s minimum duration.

It’s a way to estimate the start dates (both early start and late start) and finish dates for the project’s activities without consideration of the resource limitations.

Keep in mind that these dates aren’t necessarily the project’s actual schedule, but rather a period during which the project’s activities could have a start date and end date.

The amount of time between the early and late start is called the “float.” This is the length of time a particular project activity can start after its early start date without impacting its late finish date.

The total float is the flexibility of any project schedule, and which allows for delays or extensions in the early start without having an effect on the finish date of the project.

For instance, say you want to build a website, and you have a specific launch date in mind. This resource-leveling technique will allow you to adjust the early and late start dates by altering activity durations, lead times, lag times, and forward and backward linkages.

There may also be other constraints to consider, such as public holidays, planned closedowns, and so on. It’s also important to note that the critical path technique must be used in a short duration timescale. It doesn’t help to look at it in weeks or months, but rather you need to view it in days and possibly even hours.

2. Critical Chain Method

This resource leveling technique adds duration buffers to the entire project by including dummy activity that helps to balance out the overall path.

Using the critical chain technique will help you reduce uncertainty and prevent resource allocation problems that can stall the project, such as when a team member decides to leave or becomes unavailable.

3. Fast Tracking

Things don’t always go as planned, and sometimes projects must be rescheduled by shortening the project duration within its existing scope. One procedure that can be used in such emergencies is fast-tracking.

Fast-tracking is where the activities that are supposed to run consecutively are rescheduled to run parallel. Although this strategy is used often, it may not always work, and it may not even be possible to rework the schedule, in some cases.

4. Resource Crashing

Crashing is where extra work efforts and resources are added in order to meet the minimum time as calculated in the critical path method. This is another technique that can be used to speed up a project's timeline or regain lost time.

This might involve asking some team members to work weekends or overtime, adding some additional team members to the project, or outsourcing some of the project activities in an effort to get the work done on schedule (all of which will impact your budget).

Pro Tip:

It’s also important to keep an eye on approved changes as these may affect your project plan. You have to consider the effects any change will have on your project’s expenses, time, and other resource constraints before it’s approved.

Luckily, there are tons of different ways you can resolve conflicts, including through resource management methodologies and resource scheduling software tools such as the ones outlined below.

10 Helpful Tools for Resource Leveling

There are tons of tools and software designed to help make the resource planning process as easy and efficient as possible.

Listed below are a few of the best resource management software and tools to help boost your performance and productivity.

1. 1. Float — Best for intuitive resource management
2. 2. Kantata — Best for real-time resource utilization
3. 3. Productive — Best resource planning and capacity forecasting
4. 4. Resource Guru — Best for hassle-free resource booking
5. 5. Silverbucket — Best for project-based work
6. 6. Wrike — Best for scalability
7. 7. Bonsai Agency Software — Best for workload optimization
8. 8. monday.com — Best for simple workload planning
9. 9. Hub Planner — Best for midsize and large companies
10. 10. Acuity PPM — Best for project portfolio resource management

What's Next?

Want more ideas for efficiently resourcing your projects? Discuss this in Slack with 1000's of other digital project managers with DPM Membership!