Resource Optimization Techniques – Leveling and Smoothing

There could be times in your project when only the resource ‘A’ can perform a certain activity. You need to ensure that ‘A’ being a critical resource shouldn’t be doubly booked. If there are two parallel activities in the project network diagram, ‘A’ cannot be assigned to both of them

Infact, this dependency can also lead to a change in the network diagram and the critical path.

Resource Leveling

Resource Leveling evaluates all the resources to see if the network diagram or the critical path needs to change. This is done to accommodate resource assignment dependencies and ensuring resources aren’t over booked. Resource leveling may result in change of the total project duration

Resource Smoothing

Once resource leveling is done, there is a possibility that the float or slack values have changed. It is also possible that there are days when resources aren’t utilized as much as other days. Resource smoothing is done to ensure that resource utilization is more or less similar across the project. Resource smoothing will not change the total project duration

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