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Lessons Learned with Microsoft Project (Part 5)
Dr. Andrew Makar is an IT program manager and is the author of the Microsoft Project Made Easy series. For more project management advice, visit the website TacticalProjectManagement.com.
Lesson Learned #5: Remember to Resource Level the Project Plan.
Before you baseline your project plan, remember to resource level the plan. Resource leveling is the process of allocating team members across tasks without any resource conflicts. The process ensures a team member is not working on multiple tasks at the same time and the amount of work doesn't exceed a team member's resource availability. Resource leveling a plan ensures an accurate project end date is forecasted and the plan can realistically meet the end date.
This step is often overlooked, and during project execution schedule variances quickly appear. A software developer cannot write code for two programs at the same time and the project schedule should reflect these dependencies. A team member cannot work 16 hours in an 8-hour day. Although additional overtime may be required, the project plan should support an 8-hour workday or risk exhausting the project staff.
MS-Project provides an automatic Resource Leveling feature. Although this tool mathematically levels resources across the plan, it often extends the project end date without additional input from the project manager. The project manager has the option to change a resource's availability or reassign tasks to other team members. Since the project manager knows the dependencies between the tasks, the project manager can better refine the …
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