In my recent “Is MS Project’s Leveling Optimal?” article, I covered the fact that MS Project may not produce optimally leveled schedules in terms of schedule length. The analysis showed us how well Project’s leveling performs relative to established optima. In a comment on that article, Eric Uyttewaal suggested it would be informative to explore…

The objective of resource leveling is to minimize schedule length while honoring precedence relationships and resource constraints. If we know what a schedule’s optimal leveled length is, we can compare that to leveling results that Project provides. In a prior article, we assessed the optimality of Project’s leveling relative to one particular schedule. The next…

For the project manager, the objective of resource leveling is to minimize the length of the resource-feasible schedule. For the computer scientist, the objective is to write code that will find a resource-feasible schedule in a reasonably short amount of time. The resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) is NP-hard, which means that finding an optimal…

Figure 1. An unleveled schedule (adapted from Peter Brucker and Sigrid Knust, Complex Scheduling, 2nd ed, Springer-Verlag, 2012, Figure 3.2, p. 120)   The schedule in the above figure is not resource-feasible. Resources are over allocated, and the schedule needs to be leveled. Assuming you want to minimize project duration, how would you level it?…

Summary ‘ Time Modeling’ is the simplest way of working with project scheduling applications (like Microsoft Project and Oracle Primavera) that everyone can learn in one or two days of training (‘introductory’ level). The ‘intermediary’ level is modeling time and workloads (‘Workload Modeling’ ), which requires you to learn many more features in your scheduling application…

Project Management Institute (PMI)® Professional Development Units (PDUs): This Webinar is eligible for 1 PMI® PDU in the Technical category of the Talent Triangle. Event Description: Join MPUG author Daryl Deffler as he continues the journey through his latest series of articles on Resource Leveling. Slide Deck: MPUG Project 2013 Resource Leveling Part II Watch Part One Read…

Project Management Institute (PMI)® Professional Development Units (PDUs): This Webinar is eligible for 1 PMI® PDU in the Technical category of the Talent Triangle. Event Description: Join MPUG author Daryl Deffler as he journeys through his latest series of articles on Resource Leveling. Slide Deck: MPUG Project 2013 Resource Leveling Part I Watch Part Two Read Daryl’s articles…

Learn more in Daryl Deffler’s two-part webinar series on resource leveling, Resource Leveling: The Complete Series, available on-demand. Interested in more from MPUG? We provide online training for Microsoft® Project and Project Management including: Live training webinars with interactive Q&A Over 500 hours of on-demand training videos Earn the PMI® PDUs you need Personalized training transcript and certificates Over…

Welcome to the final article in the “Resource Leveling” series. If you’ve read the prior articles, you may have noticed a lack of recommendations. I did that purposely to keep those articles focused on the “black and white” aspects of tool functionality and so that I could present recommendations all together in one final article,…

There’s an old joke: How do you eat an elephant? The answer is: one bite at a time. While the joke may be goofy, it illustrates an important concept. A step-by-step ordered approach can be used to address any big problem. Leveling a new schedule for the first time can be just like that. The…