Modern teams with remote and hybrid structures provide unlimited potential in terms of managing resources in an agile manner. However, without a systematic approach and some guiding principles, making decisions about resource allocation can be intensely challenging.
The project management method of resource leveling is one possible approach to resource allocation with a ton of potential for balancing priorities across your team’s efforts and assets. This article serves as a guide to resource leveling’s core components and the potential benefits of utilizing this approach.
Resource leveling: Basics and benefits
When it comes to understanding resource leveling, you need to start with resource allocation. In its simplest form, resource allocation is assigning and scheduling resources for each step of a particular project. Resources come in many forms depending on the project at hand. Some common examples include team members and budget.
Resource leveling is making sure resource demand doesn’t exceed what’s available over the course of the project so that it can proceed steadily, and no step is jeopardized by a lack of resources. By allocating limited resources and adjusting the project schedule as needed, you can avoid problems associated with backlog and overallocation while keeping team members and stakeholders happy.
Resource leveling examples
Here’s how to make the most of resource leveling and examples of it in action:
- Adjust timelines based on resource constraints: Often, the most efficient way to level resources is to adjust the project schedule. This might mean shifting end dates out further to avoid assigning anyone overtime or shortening the project duration by assigning available resources more optimally. For example, suppose a graphic designer is scheduled for a task that will take 12 hours on Monday and another task that will take four hours on Tuesday, with no other assignments. By moving four hours of the Monday task to Tuesday, they create two eight-hour days instead of one day with overtime pay and another with unused time.
- Schedule tasks simultaneously when possible: Completing tasks in parallel can enable more efficient resource usage, as well. Consider applying the critical path method (CPM), a project management strategy that defines which tasks can be done simultaneously and which can’t. You can use this method to determine the longest chain of task dependencies, which provides a lower bound on the project timeline. Then, you can assign other tasks to be completed simultaneously to even out the work, prevent bottlenecks, and optimize resources.
- Allocate resources to critical priorities first: During the project planning phase, assign resources to the most important tasks first. That way, if resource requirements change later, you can rest assured that key parts of the project are covered, and any corners that might need to be cut are less consequential.
- Prioritize balanced work versus speedy execution: Fast-tracking, while sometimes necessary, is more likely to lead to resource imbalances. Those imbalances can lead to quality control problems and even impact resource availability on other projects. In contrast, a more balanced workflow, coupled with realistic project completion dates, tends to keep everything running more smoothly.
6 ways resource leveling could help with your next project
Here’s how resource leveling can benefit your next project:
1. Minimize delays and downtime
If you use the critical path method in your project planning, you should be able to identify the total float—the total “cushion” of time often associated with tasks that have minimal dependencies. Look for ways to fill in those time gaps by reassigning other tasks. That way, everyone stays busy, and no team member takes on too much at once.
In this way, resource leveling helps avoid downtime. The net effect of less downtime is that the entire project is more likely to meet its finish date without delays.
2. Utilize your resources more consistently
Suppose your project team consists of members with two different skill sets—half are experts in widget design, and the other half are experts in widget production. The design must be completed before production can begin, but if the widget producers are just sitting around and waiting, you waste resources.
Instead, a resource leveling strategy might consist of staggering projects so that the widget producers are actively producing one set of widgets while the widget designers are designing the next set. Now, all resources are used at all times in a consistent manner that enables the completion of more total work.
3. Prioritize what matters most
The larger job of resource management, in general, allows you to take a strategic approach to how you allocate the available supply of different resources. This makes it possible to more easily prioritize those projects and tasks that are the most critical.
Suppose you are leveling resources that include skilled software programmers, for example. You can assign the most experienced programmers to the most critical or complex jobs and the least experienced ones to simpler tasks. This reduces the chances of something going wrong with the critical and complex jobs, while all team members maintain equal workloads adjusted to their abilities.
4. Achieve a fairer distribution of labor
One of the main goals of resource leveling is to avoid overallocation or under allocation of any particular resource.
Imagine an IT team that has recently downsized. During the downsizing process, one team member ended up taking on all of the extra tasks that had previously been distributed across a larger team. This individual is now overworked, while the other remaining team members have the same workload they had before the downsizing.
By applying resource leveling to this situation, tasks can be redistributed more fairly. Moreover, careful examination of infrastructure might identify tasks that are superfluous and can be eliminated, reducing the team’s total workload so that no one needs to work overtime.
It’s also possible that instead of redistributing tasks, bringing on independent professionals to lighten the load proves a better option. The resource leveling process might also involve shifting priorities and adjusting timelines for different tasks.
5. Integrate other project management methods
Resource leveling is compatible with many project management methods. For example, it facilitates project streamlining and waste elimination associated with Lean methodologies. It also works well with iterative agile collaboration, which requires that projects be broken down into manageable pieces that can be completed in sprints. The project visibility of Kanban boards or Gantt charts makes it easier to visually identify places where too many resources are needed at once and places where additional work can be added to optimize resource use.
If you use project management software, you may find that it comes with tools to better track and manage resources. Therefore, implementing resource leveling is often easily facilitated with such software, regardless of the project management methodology underlying it.
6. Adjust timelines strategically, not haphazardly
Just as projects vary in priority, they also vary in the flexibility of their timelines. With some projects, you can extend the end date with little consequence, while others have deadlines that must be met to keep customers happy.
Because projects often contain many unknowns during their planning phase, shifting due dates is par for the course. But shifting dates around should be done strategically whenever possible to maintain priorities. Resource leveling provides an avenue for keeping high-priority deadlines fixed, while low-priority deadlines are adjusted instead—all while work hours stay the same across the board.
Expand your best resource: Talent
The ultimate goal of resource leveling is to balance resource demand with supply.
Often, talent can be the most flexible resource you have access to, especially if you supplement your full-time workers with skilled independent professionals. Adding skilled talent when and where needed allows you to add and subtract resources quickly and easily as a project progresses.
