Jory MacKay on April 16, 2025 Resource leveling 101: How to “fix” resource allocation
Whether it’s people, materials, or cash, all projects need resources to succeed. But, resource management is consistently voted as one of the hardest project management disciplines to get right. When resources aren’t available, projects suffer — or even fail.
Resource leveling helps project teams hit their goals by adjusting the project timeline to suit the resources at their disposal.
As an added bonus, resource leveling helps keep costs under control, while also maintaining stakeholder relationships and delivering the full project scope.
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If you’re struggling with resource management issues on your project, then this article is for you. We’ll dive into resource leveling, including what it is, how it differs from other resource management techniques, and how and when to use it in your projects.
What is resource leveling?
Resource leveling is the process of adjusting a project’s schedule and timeline to better suit the resources available.
Specifically, once a project manager understands the ‘level’ of resources at their disposal, they can reschedule the workload to best achieve the project objectives.
Typically, resource leveling is a technique that project manager’s use when their resource management plan goes wrong — which is a common project risk.
Maybe resources you were promised are no longer available?
Or, perhaps those resources have been rescheduled to another project?
Or the size of the task at hand is bigger than you first estimated?
In any case, resource leveling helps adapt to challenges by adjusting the schedule to suit the resources available.
But, because resource leveling requires timelines to be adjusted, it’s not appropriate for time-critical projects with hard deadlines. Instead, resource leveling is typically used for cost-critical projects where the budget is fixed and investment in additional resources isn’t possible.
Two real-life examples of resource leveling
One of the easiest ways to understand how resource leveling works (and how you can apply it to your own projects) is to look at real-life examples.
Here are two common situations where you might want to think about leveling your resources:
Example 1: Lack of resources
John is a project manager whose team is building a new mobile booking app for a client, BarberCo. He’s five weeks into the project and the team has just finished the design work and are moving into the build stage.
John’s plan was for the build to be completed by two software developers, with each one working side-by-side for five days. But, just before the build was due to start, one of the developers had to take unexpected sick leave.
John’s agency has no other developers available, leaving John with no option but to adjust the project timeline to accommodate for just one developer. John re-estimates the project plan, with the build now forecasted to take 10 days in total, with the one remaining developer completing all the activity themselves.
Example 2: Resource overwork
Sherry is the product manager for Invest&Go, an online investment training platform for students. Sherry’s team of four are working to support a planned platform upgrade, which is scheduled to go live in four weeks.
As the team works through the analysis for the upgrade, they realize they have underestimated the work required by 50%. The team wants to meet their agreed target date, so they all agree to work an additional hour a day to make back the time.
After just four days, Sherry realizes the additional hours are impacting the team’s mental wellbeing, and she makes the call to re-baseline the upgrade dates to bring her team’s workload back to the normal level. She extends the schedule by 50%, making the total upgrade timeline six weeks, to re-balance the team’s resource capacity.
Resource leveling is a technique that project manager’s use when their resource management plan goes wrong.
When to use resource leveling
Resource leveling is most commonly used when a project cannot obtain more resources, or it would rather not overstretch its current resources. Specifically, you may choose to use resource leveling when:
- You’re not bound to a hard end-date. When projects have the flexibility to extend their timeline, resource leveling is often the most straightforward and effective resource management strategy.
- You don’t want to reduce your project scope. Other resource management techniques reduce the scope to ensure the project meets the same deadline. This means you only deliver part of what you promised, often leading to unhappy stakeholders. Resource leveling avoids this by extending the timeline to ensure everything in your agreed scope gets done.
- You’re trying to prevent overwork or task overload. When resourcing gets tight, it can be easy to fall into the trap of asking the team to work ‘just a little longer’. This is a slippery slope, with overwork leading to stress and burnout across the project team.
- You’re worried about maintaining the quality of your deliverables. If the team is spread too thin, it can impact the quality of your project deliverables. By extending the timelines, resource leveling protects quality by giving everyone the time they need to deliver to a high standard.
Resource leveling vs. resource smoothing: What’s the difference?
Resource smoothing is another popular resource management technique that’s used to keep projects on track when resourcing doesn’t go to plan.
Resource smoothing is the process of adjusting a project’s tasks or scope to ensure timelines can still be met with the resource available. Specifically, once a project has defined the ‘level’ of resources at its disposal, it will re-shape the work required to achieve the objectives within the target timeline.
Let’s go back to our earlier example with Sherry and Invest&Go’s platform upgrade. First, the team identified that 50% extra work was required. From here, using resource smoothing, they would then identify tasks that could be removed from the upgrade, helping to speed up the work and meet the original four-week timeline.
While resource smoothing protects the project’s timeline, it does reduce the scope, which in turn, also risks the quality of the project’s deliverables.
Here’s how resource smoothing is different from resource *leveling:*
Like all things in project management, when you’re faced with a question of the right technique to use, it often comes down to your project’s priorities and the project management triple constraint. Put simply:
- Use resource leveling if your main goal is to control budget and limit resource overwork. Leveling allows you to adjust the schedule of tasks and accept the impact on the overall project timeline.
- Use resource smoothing if your main goal is to control the current project deadline. Smoothing allows you to eliminate non-critical tasks or scope to meet the same deadline. In the worst case scenarios, you may need to accept you’ll need to invest in more resources to achieve the original timeline.
4 resource management strategies you can start using today
Now we know all about resource leveling, it’s time to walk through how to use it in real life for your very own project.
But before we dive into an action plan, let’s set the scene:
Picture this: You’re midway through a project and you’ve got a resourcing problem. You’ve made commitments to your stakeholders, but you simply don’t have the resources to continue to plan. What do you do?
First, you need to fully understand the situation.
Are you simply delayed in getting the resources you need, or will you never get them at all?
Do you have the resources, but you’ve got too much work to complete?
Are you struggling to prioritize the tasks on your to-do list?
Check your project management tool, speak with team members, or look through your business case to understand the exact resource problem you’re faced with.
Once you know the situation, try these resource management techniques to help you re-plan and deliver on your objectives.
1. True resource leveling: Same resources; extended timelines
If you can’t get hold of more resources, then resource leveling is probably going to be your best bet. Here, you’ll work through your plan and decide how tasks and schedules will be adjusted to suit the resources available.
- If you haven’t already, break your project schedule down into individual tasks. Task management techniques are great for this, helping you define the work required for each stage of your project.
- From there, estimate how long each task will take with the resources you have. Use estimate techniques, such as the three-point estimate, to get an accurate forecast.
- Once your estimates are complete, align with your stakeholders to agree new deadlines and re-baseline the project.
2. Resource smoothing: Same resources; less work
If you’re stuck with limited resources and the timelines are fixed, resource smoothing is a great way to keep things moving.
Resource smoothing will keep things moving.
With resource smoothing, work through the tasks in your to-do list and scale back anything that isn’t essential.
- Start by detailing the tasks on your to-do list or roadmap, with a clear view of what needs doing and how each one contributes to the project’s scope.
- From there, prioritize and deprioritize the tasks accordingly, looking for ways to reduce the workload while still achieving your project objectives.
- As with resource leveling, align with your stakeholders on the work you’ll continue and the work you’ll drop by formally changing and agreeing your new project scope.
3. Add resources to support your critical path
If you’ve exhausted all of your options, sometimes there’s no choice but to bite the bullet and bring in more resources. For time-critical projects that have reduced their scope but still require help with their critical path activities, bring in some more resources to help.
- Work through your project’s critical path, by completing a work breakdown structure, and mapping their durations with a forwards and backwards path.
- Once you have your critical sets of activities defined, estimate the resources required to complete each one on time.
- Then, complete a gap analysis between the resources you have and the resources you need, before submitting the request for additional support to your project sponsor.
4. Add resources and extend your deadline
At times, project managers have to accept extra resources or extended timelines alone won’t help, and have to combine both to deliver the project’s objectives.
- As we’ve seen with our other resource management techniques, start by breaking down tasks and getting a clear view of your critical path.
- From there, estimate the time and resources required for each task.
- Lastly, align with stakeholders on the new deadlines, updated scope, and the resources required to help you deliver your project objectives.
Best practices for helping you master resource allocation
- Take advantage of the data in your project management tool. Project management tools like Planio are a great source of data to help you see the tasks, resources, and budget that make up your entire project landscape. Using this data helps you plan, allocate, and manage resources, as well as identify resource risks before they become a problem.
- Increase your project’s float to add buffers between tasks. All projects will experience resource issues at some point, so do what you can in the planning phase to give yourself wiggle room. When building your initial project plan, build extra float time between your tasks to give you a buffer to play with in the future.
- Look at previous projects for reference. Like many things in project management, there’s lots to learn about resourcing by looking back at the lessons learned from previous projects. Where others have made resourcing mistakes, you can learn and avoid the same pitfalls in your project.
- Use Gantt charts to check for task overlap. Visualization tools like Gantt charts help you easily see task overlaps and identify resource issues before they occur. Gantt charts are a core part of Planio, providing a complete picture of your project’s schedule and how tasks fit together or overlap.
Smoothen out your project’s bumps with resource leveling
Whether you haven’t received the resources you were promised or are trying hard to manage the workload for your team, resource management is a constant balancing act. Get it wrong, as it’ll quickly lead to project stress — and in the worst cases, failure.
Resource leveling is a great technique that helps you adjust your project’s schedule and timeline to better suit the resources available. Used correctly, it can really help limit the load on your team while still delivering the scope that your stakeholders expect.
The best project managers use tools such as Planio to visualize their entire project landscape. With handy features such as Gantt charts and Agile boards, Planio gives you the entire view of your project’s tasks, helping you identify potential resourcing bottlenecks before they derail your project.
Try Planio with your own team — free for 30 days (no credit card required!)
