Resource Leveling

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the resource leveling and when it should be done. He explains that this is a complex task that requires a cost-benefit analysis and decision making, and do this task only through software is not the best decision.

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the, for five minutes, BM Podcast Today like to discuss with you about Resource Leveling what is two level Resource most? And almost always the project manager face a very hard time with restrictions of resources. I don't have enough people, enough equipment, enough resources to do the work. So I need to handle and to see how I can manage battered the resource that I have, because I cannot hire more people.

I can not buy more, a keep that in. So it's very hard. And one of the most important things of the Resource Leveling is to optimize the Resource a location. So let's think about air working. So I have a land and that want to build a building and I need to do some earth moving. So I need to take earth from the top to feel or the parts too, make a flat area to build.

This is a Zack CLI is exactly the same aspect of Resource Leveling most of the time I have, for example, let me give you an example. Five software developers. And in the first week I need two of them in the second week I need eight or 10 in the third week. I need only three of them. It's extremely, extremely important to optimize because in the first week I will have three of them without work.

And then the second week I will have a lot of requests and I will not have enough people. So what does Resource Leveling is to delay tasks, is that right? Rearrange the project tasks to better fit the restrictions that you have in your project. So it's like removes ERF from one part to Phil the other part, but usually 99% of the cases they're is we won major inconvenience of doing Resource Leveling its the delay.

Usually when you start doing level, you level, you level, you level Resource and then the price that you must pay, its maybe one week of delay one month of the late, and then you need to do an Gus benefit analysis to see if this is good are not for you. If this was okay or not, if you can do the Resource Leveling without the late the product, this is for me. Perfect. This is that haven't it is the heaven is the best think, but it's very, very, very hard and very, very unusual.

So maybe it's extremely nice to delay maybe a couple of days, the project to solve a problem. When the resources are very expensive and you cannot hire more resources or you cannot pay extra hours, you cannot maybe make people work on the weekends to do the work and maybe have compensate this disease hours during the week days later. So this is the most important one thing that amazed me and makes me very worried is that some project managers, what they know about Resource Leveling is okay, open Microsoft project, go to tools Resource Leveling and press.

Okay. This remember again, as I said, many, many times software is like a calculator. Software's not the project manager. So when you press this button in Microsoft project or any other project management software, you are doing a calculation. You're not making a decision. So it's very good to simulate and do use the Resource Leveling to understand the movements of your tasks, but the decisions belongs to you and not the software.

So it's very easy to click, click, click to get a three, four clicks N level, but the one understand what is better for the product requires a good project management people with experience to understand. So it's very easy, the calculation, and this is a very good aspect because in the past all project management will have a very, very hard time to level Resource without this computers, but the computers, not everything, the computer, we need to understand what is going on, what is moving and check.

If does the lace AR this overlaps or they can be an official or not for the project. When we did, you do have an extremely fast track of a project. You will face very hard time to level resources because if you are doing fast-tracking, it means that you are trying to rush the project. Then when you level Resource, you will delay the project again. So it will be very hard to handle with this kind of project.

So maybe you will need to find another solution, but more people or change time, time, work on the weekends or do something else to solve. It's extremely interesting to use the Resource Leveling to see what is going on, to have the feeling and to simulate the results. This is extremely good. The software for that, but you need to understand how this earth moving works to build your building with less impact, with less impact.

That's all that I have for you this week. See you next week. Have a wonderful week. See you next week with another five minutes PM. Podcast bye.

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