Resource leveling

Article summary

In project management, resource leveling is defined by A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) as "A technique in which start and finish dates are adjusted based on resource limitation with the goal of balancing demand for resources with the available supply." Resource leveling problem could be formulated as an optimization problem. The problem could be solved by different optimization algorithms such as exact algorithms or meta-heuristic methods. When performing project planning activities, the manager will attempt to schedule certain tasks simultaneously. When more resources such as machines or people are needed than are available, or perhaps a specific person is needed in both tasks, the tasks will have to be rescheduled concurrently or even sequentially to manage the constraint. Project planning resource leveling is the process of resolving these conflicts. It can also be used to balance the workload of primary resources over the course of the project[s], usually at the expense of one of the traditional triple constraints (time, cost, scope). When using specially designed project software, leveling typically means resolving conflicts or over allocations in the project plan by allowing the software to calculate delays and update tasks automatically. Project management software leveling requires delaying tasks until resources are available.…

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