Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Balancing Workloads

Before you can call a schedule done, you have to balance workloads so your assigned resources (people and equipment) are busy, but not burning out. The first step is recognizing the problem, and Project makes it easy to find assignment peaks and valleys.

Then you have to correct the workload imbalances you find. Project offers several ways to even out workloads. The easiest way to eliminate overallocations is to ask resources if a heavier schedule is OK with them. Pragmatically, you should consider this approach only when overallocations are small and short-lived. The best options are adding more resources and replacing a resource with someone who has more time. Of course, in order to do that, you need to have other resources available with the right skills.

When longer hours or more resources aren’t an option, delaying assignments may do the trick. For example, when a resource has two assignments that overlap by a day, delaying one of those assignments by 1 day solves the problem.

This section describes how to spot resource-allocation issues and offers several ways to fix them. If these strategies don’t help, you can always look for other available resources, or ask resources to work more.

Note

When you overload your resources, the project finish date may look good, but it’s bogus, because your resources are overallocated. In other words, giving people 20 hours’ worth of work a day doesn’t mean they’re going to do it. On the other hand, resources who don’t have ...