Meet your project goals with these 5 resource management techniques

Unplanned requests, conflicting schedules, over-allocations, and shifting timelines are the bane of many an agency or delivery team’s existence—and also the unfortunate norm for many project managers and resource planners out there.

Can you ever fully eliminate them? Nope.

But can you use some resource management techniques to mitigate their impact? For sure, and we cover them below.

What are resource management techniques?

Resource management techniques are methods used to assign and utilize resources efficiently during a project. They include: 

• Resource leveling
• Resource smoothing
• Resource forecasting
• Resource allocation
• Resource scheduling

To be more precise, leveling and smoothing are resource optimization techniques, while forecasting, allocation, and scheduling are steps in the larger resource management process. We present them together because they collectively help you manage project resources and deal with time and resource constraints, correct scheduling conflicts, and solve allocation issues across the entire project lifecycle 💪 

(Sidenote: I bet you don’t gently smack your forehead and go “Oh, heck, time for some resource smoothing” or “Well, darn, bring out the good ol’ resource leveling” whenever you encounter an allocation or scheduling issue. But you probably already do all of the above without even knowing it. These are just the standard industry names for five solutions you’ve likely come up with on your own as part of your resource and project management work.)

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Float makes resource management easy 😉  

Get a complete view of your team’s time, skills, and profitability with live insights on resource capacity, resource usage, skill sets, and billable hours.

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5 resource management techniques (that you will likely use)

There are two main resource management techniques:
1. Resource leveling
2. Resource smoothing

And they pair with the following steps in the resource management process:
3. Resource forecasting
4. Resource allocation
5. Resource scheduling

1. Resource leveling

Resource leveling is the process of adjusting the start and end dates of projects to accommodate resource constraints. You can use this technique when shared or critical resources are available at limited times and/or in limited quantities.

For example: you had previously assigned a four-hour task to your Lead Designer on both days 1 and 2 of a new app development project (task below in purple), so that your Front-end Developer could get started on day 3.

...except inevitably some things have shifted, urgent design work has been added to day 1 (task in yellow), and the Designer is overbooked. 

To avoid overtime and level the schedule, you can adjust it and shift the start date to day 2. The Lead Designer is no longer overbooked and can complete the project on time for the Developer to pick it up on day 3. The project stays on track!

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Of course, this is a very simple example—and could well be a risky approach, considering you’ve compressed the timeframe and just moved all your Designer eggs into the day 2 basket. In real life, someone fully booked might not be able to easily split tasks; in that case, you might call for reinforcements (someone else on the team or freelancer support), adjust project scopes, or extend the timeline.

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Emily Feliciano

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Sr Creative Resource Manager at Atlassian

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When a new project comes in and the team is already swamped with work, Emily Feliciano, the Senior Creative Resource Manager at Atlassian, first tries to gauge the project’s priority. If the project must proceed, Feliciano identifies the best-suited team members and negotiates timelines for ongoing work. She says: 

“Nine times out of 10, I’m able to push out project timelines to accommodate new work, especially if I have leadership backing or I can explain that the client is paying a lot of money for the work.”

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2. Resource smoothing

Unlike resource leveling, which helps manage resource constraints, resource smoothing is the go-to technique when dealing with time constraints—like when moving your start or end dates is not a viable option.

With resource smoothing, you balance the workload by smoothing the peaks and troughs of demand, making sure your team still meets the agreed due dates and gets the project delivered. For example, when you see spikes of overallocation, you can apply resource smoothing and rearrange tasks, bring on freelancer support to remove some of the pressure from the team, or reduce the scope of work.

You can smooth your resources manually by diving into your resource utilization spreadsheets or using a dedicated resource management tool (like Float, hello 👋) that helps you check for equivalent skills and availabilities on a live schedule. For example, if someone on the team is overallocated but you have other folks on your team with a similar skill set (and open availability), you can reassign the task to them.

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Maike Jahnens

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Head of Financial Operations and Capacity Management at Scholz & Friends

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Maike Jahnens, the Head of Financial Operations and Capacity Management at global agency Scholz & Friends, oversees a team of more than 200 creatives and freelancers across eight offices.

Switching from a struggling spreadsheet to a dedicated resource management tool made resource smoothing easier by giving Jahnens and her team instant access to information like:

• What people are working on
• Where they’re based
• What language they speak
• What projects are in the pipeline 
• What their skills are
  

This enables her to reassign tasks as needed, and quickly find help with the necessary skill sets—even if it means assigning someone from the Hamburg office to work on a project with the Berlin team.

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3. Resource forecasting

Resource forecasting is not an optimization technique but a step in the resource management process—it’s the act of predicting and planning for the resources you will need to deliver a project successfully. Forecasting involves assessing future projects and/or work that has just been signed off, estimating the required effort, and comparing these requirements with available resources to make sure a) you can get it all done and b) you can get it all done well. 

Here’s a classic example: it’s June, and your digital marketing agency has a Black Friday campaign project in the pipeline. If you won this contract, would you be able to deliver it? As a project or resource manager, here’s where you’d do some forecasting and capacity planning work: 

• You’d start by understanding campaign and resource requirements (such as how many content creators, social media managers, designers, and developers you’d need)
• Then, you’d assess the current team’s skills and availability and compare them to the project team needed to deliver a successful project 
  • Bonus step: you’d set up the project as ‘tentative’ in your resource management tool 
• Finally, you’d compare upcoming needs with your current team to identify gaps in expertise or availability, and make informed decisions about hiring, getting freelance support, delaying project start, etc.

Resource forecasting is a must-have step to align and match new projects with available resources. If you are in charge of project delivery, you’ll need to:

• Understand requirements, including the skills and effort needed to deliver upcoming projects
• Evaluate team capabilities and availability (including skills and time available to work outside of pre-planned vacations, national holidays, full-time and part-time schedule) 
• Bridge resource gaps when there are discrepancies between available and required resources 
• Deliver regular updates—forecasting is an ongoing job that reflects changes in project scope or team capacity

🎓 Pro tip: having the right reports in place is key to accurate forecasts and project success. If you’re using Float, you can streamline resource forecasting through visual project timelines, resource availability insights, and the ability to generate utilization reports for better decision-making.

4. Resource allocation

Resource allocation is the process of identifying the best (and available) resources for specific projects and deciding what percentage of their time to allocate to them. The ultimate goal is delivering projects on time, within budget, and without causing overwork—and, of course, to a client’s full and utter satisfaction 😉

If you are in charge of resource allocation, you usually prioritize projects based on business value, urgency, and cost—and to do that, you need to be on top of your team members’ skills (and interests) as well as their availability, which includes factors like pre-planned time off, full- or part-time status, and current workload. 

Making sense of these moving parts and allocating the right resources is challenging, and the complexity grows the more people and variables you add. For example, your resource management plan can look as simple as this when you have a small, co-located team: 

Or as detailed as this, when you have multiple people working across locations and timezones:

The difference between the (spread)sheet and the product plan above is that dedicated tools are designed to help you visualize and adjust allocations in real time, ensure optimal resource use, avoid overutilization, and, yes: take some major logistical nightmares off your plate.   

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Easily forecast, manage, and allocate resources 

Get a complete view of your team’s time, skills, and profitability with live insights on resource capacity, resource usage, skill sets, and billable hours.

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5. Resource scheduling

Resource scheduling is closely related to resource allocation, since it is the process of assigning resources to projects and tasks within a specified timeframe. It defines who needs to do what and by when, and makes this information available to all parties involved.

Again, a classic example: you are a design agency working on a website redesign project. You forecasted, you allocated, and now it’s time to schedule specific time slots for your people—for example, the UX designer will create wireframes over the next two weeks, the creative director will scope out a new brand direction throughout, and the front-end developer will get to work as soon as both tasks are completed. 

In your resource management tool, you check team availability, assign projects, and set timeframes. As work progresses, you and your team will talk through current allocations on a regular basis (for example, on a weekly/monthly call); if you detect delays and bottlenecks, you can adjust schedules dynamically using smoothing and/or leveling techniques, and ensure timely project completion without overloading the team.

Effective resource scheduling:

• Saves time by giving clear task assignments and timelines to all team members involved in project delivery
• Maintains quality by ensuring skilled individuals perform specific tasks
• Reduces costs by minimizing idle time and avoiding project delays

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Lauren O’Halloran

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Director of Production at Toaster

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Lauren O’Halloran, Director of Production at creative agency Toaster, manages workloads for 100+ team members across four offices. 

To schedule resources efficiently, O’Halloran and her team have daily standups, where each person walks through their allocations for that day laid out on a Trello board. 

In addition to these daily meetings, they review longer-term allocations in Float every Monday. This allows them to identify team members who might be light on or overloaded with project work in the coming weeks, and reshuffle allocations or bring on additional help as needed.

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[fs-toc-omit]Use a dedicated tool for effective resource management

If you are using a spreadsheet or managing hundreds of resources, you might find it hard to spot resource overallocation or unavailability until it’s too late. This is why using a resource management tool is crucial.

Next time you have a resource conflict, don’t panic! Apply these resource management techniques and use resource planning software like Float to fix scheduling issues and manage your team’s workload.

Try it today for free.

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📚 Everything (else) you need to know about resource management 

You’ve just made it through a list of resource management techniques—but the learning doesn’t stop here! We have more to share with you if you’re interested in resource management👇

• A very (very) comprehensive resource management guide
• An overview of the resource leveling technique to help you complete projects with your available resources
• A deeper look at the resource smoothing technique to keep your projects on schedule
• A list of 10 effective resource management best practices
• An overview of the best resource management software (& how to choose the right tool)
• The ultimate how-to guide to creating a resource management plan‍
• A summary of the resource management skills you’ll need as a resource manager
• The 10 headache-inducing challenges of resource management and how to overcome them
• Some excellent answers to why is resource management important? (from real people planners)
• A crash course in resource utilization, with two calculation methods to try

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