How Resource Optimization techniques can drive a project’s success?

Resource optimization means getting the best results from our resources. The two principal approaches towards resource optimization are known as resource leveling and resource smoothing. The difference among them is that resource optimization refers to any approach that we have to ensure that we get the best value from the resources that are available for delivering our project. In this guide, we will guide you on how resource optimization techniques can drive a project’s success.

The term resources can apply to any kind of resource, including people, materials, or assets. Although we’re talking about resource optimization, resource smoothing, and resource leveling, we are most often applying them to people, or human resources.

Similar to fast-tracking and crashing, these two terms, resource leveling, and resource smoothing, are often used interchangeably by many project managers. 

Difference between Resource Leveling and Resource Smoothing

Let’s understand the difference between resource leveling and resource smoothing. But before we do that, it is also important to state that project managers are flexible and realistic. And this means that often, on our projects, what we do is a combination of both.

We use both resource smoothing and resource leveling in our optimization which is proper. The approach that we take to resource optimization will usually depend on whether our project is resource-limited or time-limited.

Resource-limited means that you have a fixed availability of resources or a budget to pay for them. You’d like to finish early, but resources are your critical constraint. In this case, the approach we take is resource-leveling.

 When a project is time-limited, it must be completed by a certain deadline. Sure, we’d like to minimize the use of our resources, but time is our constraint. And if we need to, we may use additional resources to achieve this.

In this case, the approach we take is resource smoothing. 

In resource leveling, we are prepared to delay activities so that we can use our resources with a more even profile and fewer peaks and troughs in the requirement for resources. This creates less variation in our use of resources and can have two very useful consequences. 

Firstly, it can mean that we need fewer resources to get the work done. 

Secondly, it can reduce the risk of the non-availability of critical resources, either due to other requirements on those resources or if those resources are not available for reasons like illness or domestic problems.

How Resource Leveling can save our Project Schedule?

Resource leveling is the process we use to resolve resource conflicts. When we don’t have sufficient resources, we need to allocate resources to get the work done in the time that an aspect of the project is scheduled. Of course, in the real world of projects, sometimes we do, and we can expect our people to work a few extra hours for a week or two. But it’s not good practice to expect that of people, and it certainly isn’t sustainable over long periods. So if we find that our resources would need some time to be working significantly more hours than they have available, we need to do some resource-leveling. 

The principles of resource leveling are about a fair and efficient allocation of work. And there are several ways that we can level our resources for a project. We can delay start times, or we can extend the planned duration of some of our tasks. We can remove some of those tasks, or we could allocate additional resources and add new people to the resource team.

We can split tasks up, or we could bring tasks forward so that they can be done before the critical/peak period when our resources would be over-allocated. Finally, rather than assigning additional resources, we could assign alternative resources where we have the potential to use more skilled, more expert, and therefore more effective people for the task. In a project, it’s always useful to have new people doing new tasks and learning new skills. But when we’re overallocating those because they have too much learning time, bringing in more experienced, more expert resources can be a solution. 

Resource leveling is ideal when there are constraints or restrictions on the availability of resources. By using resource leveling, we can increase our confidence that the resources will be available when we need them. Because we can allow ourselves to adjust the start and end dates of activities to delay the use of those resources, we can find that resource leveling leads to changes in the project timeline.

It can affect the critical path and therefore cause the end date of the project to be moved back, which means that resource leveling is not appropriate if we have a fixed deadline to work to. 

How does Resource Smoothing help to achieve on-time completion?

In resource smoothing, we move activities, but only within the constraints of the existing available float, or slack.

PMI defines resource smoothing as a resource optimization technique in which free and total floats are used without affecting the critical path. However, there is also an alternative approach to resource smoothing. 

In this case, we can either increase or reduce the number of resources applied to any given task.

This allows us to do two things. 

Firstly, it allows us to smooth out the peaks and troughs in resource requirements. 

Secondly, it allows us to add or reduce resources and ensure that the tasks are all finished by the original deadline.

Conclusion

Resource Leveling and Resource Smoothing are two widely used terms for resource optimization. Both offer their benefits and have their different applications for real-world projects. Between these two extremes, of course, we can make compromises in our planning. We look for ways to speed up our project with more resources and we look for ways to use our resources more carefully by allowing our project to take a little bit longer in certain places. 

In Conclusion, we can use the Resource Leveling technique when we don’t have enough resources available on the project, while Resource Smoothing is ideal when our project is time-limited so we can move resources and utilize them to finish the project by the target date.