A quick guide to resource smoothing: definition, benefits, and process

The clock is ticking, and you have limited resources available for your project. How do you deliver it on time without compromising quality or burning out your team?

This is where resource smoothing, a resource management and optimization technique, comes in.

This technique allows you to adjust your tasks’ start and end dates without moving the project deadline. Resource smoothing keeps the project on track while regulating and balancing the demand on your people’s time.

In this short guide, we’ll break down the fundamentals of resource smoothing. You’ll learn what it is, how it works, and how to use it without compromising your project.

What is resource smoothing in project management?

Resource smoothing (also known as time-constrained scheduling) is a technique used to optimize project resources without changing the project’s end date.

The technique involves adjusting the project schedule without making changes to the total project duration. All adjustments are made using slack, aka the extra time available between tasks and the end of the project. The allocations become distributed so that they are balanced throughout.

Imagine you’re in charge of creating the website for an e-commerce store set for launch on Black Friday. To meet the deadline, your engineers are initially required to work long hours, leading to potential burnout and quality concerns. However, upon analyzing the schedule, you identify a 5-day gap before the next stage.

By redistributing tasks within this slack time, your team can work more efficiently, reducing their daily workload to a manageable 7-8 hours while still delivering an outstanding website on time.

4 benefits of using resource smoothing

Resource smoothing empowers you to optimize resource utilization, improve team well-being, and achieve project success without compromising on your hard deadlines

1. It prevents missed deadlines

With only 34% of projects meeting the due date, project managers have to ensure that changing the project schedule does not affect project delivery.

Resource smoothing lets you adjust the project schedule without changing the critical path or project timeline.

2. It maximizes resource utilization

Smoothing helps in balancing the demand for resources over time. It prevents situations where certain team members are overloaded with work while others have idle periods. It is one of the best resource optimization techniques for ensuring the overall efficiency and productivity of the team.

3. It reduces stress and burnout

Project managers are often in a race against time. There’s pressure to move at breakneck speed which can wear out team members.

According to the 2022 American Psychological Association Trends Report, about 60% of employees experienced adverse effects from work-related stress.  Resource smoothing helps project managers balance team well-being while delivering projects on time.

4. It improves project quality

A well-balanced workload allows team members to focus on their tasks without rushing, leading to better quality. It enables them to devote the necessary time and attention to each aspect of the project, resulting in fewer mistakes.

What are the biggest resource smoothing drawbacks? 

One of the main challenges of resource smoothing is that it is a complex process. You need to identify the periods of slack in the project, adjust the activities to fit into them and ensure that the changes do not impact your project.

In a multi-project environment, adjusting the duration of tasks to even out resource demand might lead to schedule conflicts if the person is allocated to another project. If a resource has seven hours allocated to another task, adding more tasks to their workload will lead to resource overallocation. In a situation like this, managers have to make adjustments to ensure that they are resources are not overwhelmed with too many tasks.

As slack reduces, the project becomes less flexible. This can make it hard to handle unexpected situations that may arise during the project, as there’s less time available to accommodate changes.

Resource smoothing vs. resource leveling: key differences, explained

Resource smoothing is used when the project is constrained by time, e.g., when it has a hard deadline on Black Friday. Resource leveling is used when the project doesn’t have enough resources to get it past the finish line, e.g., having only one developer for a project that requires two.

When using resource smoothing, there are no changes to the critical path. The project follows the shortest minimum path to finish the project. But in the case of resource leveling, the project end date might be extended or delayed to accommodate resource shortages.

Resource smoothing is usually applied after resource leveling. Often resource leveling is used first, right after the project tasks are allocated and you discover that the resources are stretched. If the work is unevenly distributed—long hours on some days, shorter hours on others—resource smoothing is used to evenly distribute work using slack.

Another difference is that resource smoothing removes some flexibility from the project schedule because it uses up extra time in the project. On the other hand, the leveled schedule is still flexible as slack remains unchanged.

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Resource smoothing | Resource leveling ~ Used when the project is constrained by time | Used when the project is constrained by resources ~ The critical path remains unchanged | The critical path might change ~ It is applied after resource leveling | It is used after the schedule is created ~ The schedule becomes less flexible | The schedule remains flexible

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How to do resource smoothing in a dedicated tool

Resource smoothing is an effective way of balancing demand with its availability, but adjusting a project schedule can cause negative ripple effects. If you are using spreadsheets, you could change or extend the duration of a task and cause a schedule conflict.

Resource smoothing in a dedicated tool like Float (hey 👋) starts from a comprehensive view of your team’s schedule, so you can understand their true availability before adjusting the end and start dates of activities.

Let’s walk through how it works.

First, look through the project schedule to identify peaks in allocation. You can easily see the exact number of extra hours team members have on the Report dashboard.

Also, overtime is marked in red making it easy to spot from the schedule.

On the Report dashboard, you can also spot where tasks could be redistributed to reduce workload.

Look out for extra time (in between tasks or phases) that you can use to extend work.

If a team member is working 4 hours and extending the date of these tasks doesn’t affect the rest of the project schedule or other projects they are assigned to, we can extend the task’s duration.

As you adjust the schedule, watch for other variables, e.g., is the team member working on another project that day? Would adding a task to their schedule derail their other tasks? Is there a schedule conflict?

Don’t forget to involve your team in the resource smoothing process. Notify your team members of adjustments using the @mention so they know about the changes and can give you feedback.

Avoid tight schedules with Float

While resource smoothing is a good and effective project management technique, it comes at a cost– tight schedules. There’s less flexibility as slack is reduced, and your team might have to rush to meet deadlines.

Tentatively planning projects beforehand reduces the chances of uneven allocations of resources and tight timelines. It lets you map out projects before they are confirmed. Your schedule gives you an idea of the resources and time that you’d need to do the work so you can make accurate estimates.

Ready to get started? Try Float for free.

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

The learning doesn’t stop here! We have a lot more to share with you 👇

• A very (very) comprehensive resource management guide ‍
• 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
• A list of 5 resource management techniques you can use to keep your projects going
• An overview of the resource leveling technique to help you complete projects with your available resources

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