PMP Exam Tips: Resource Levelling vs Resource Smoothing

Hello and welcome to Examspm's YouTube channel where we will teach you how you can pass your PMP or CAPM certification on your first try. Today's topic is what is the difference between resource leveling and resource smoothing. It rarely happens that you have all the resources as per your project requirements in order to complete your project. Even if you have them during execution, there's risk that they may be taken away from you and you have to manage, make do with lesser resources than is available in order for you to complete your project. So this is where resource optimization techniques come into play. Even when you have all the necessary resources, then you— it is still your responsibility to use these resources as efficiently as possible to save costs for your company. In order to achieve this objective, there's 2 resource optimization techniques you can use, and these are resource leveling and resource smoothing. So these techniques will allow you to complete the project with minimal obstructions, and in this video I'm going to show you what the difference between resource leveling and resource smoothing are. So let's start off with resource leveling. You use resource leveling when you have limited resources and you can extend the schedule. Resource leveling is used when a critical resource may not be available for a certain period of time or duration, or you have to share a resource with another project. The demand for the resource basically exceeds the supply. So what we can see here is that in week 1 and 2 on the left-hand side of the graph, the resource is working more than 40 hours a week in order to complete the project. Now, although this is feasible on paper, in reality this is not as feasible. So what happens is that by using resource leveling, you're extending the schedule. So instead of completing this project in 5 weeks, you're completing it in 6 weeks in order to account for the fact that your workers can't work for more than 40 hours hours per week. So in essence, when resources are not available to help you complete the project schedule during the time frame that you need them to complete it on, then you extend the project duration to accommodate these changes. Now the second resource optimization technique is called resource smoothing. You use resource smoothing when you have to optimize the resources and you cannot extend the schedule. So what we can see here from this diagram is on the left-hand side, on week 1 and 2, using the resource at full capacity of 40 hours. In week 4 and 5, you're using it a lot less, so what you're doing in resource smoothing is you're readjusting their schedule a little bit so that they have an even amount of work throughout the 6 weeks. So since you can't extend the schedule, the project completion date and the critical path will stay the same. Here, the activities cannot be delayed more than their total or their free float. Okay, so let's compare and contrast the difference between resource leveling and resource smoothing again. In resource leveling, the project end date does change, so this is usually used for tasks that are on the critical path. So if there is an extension of the schedule, the entire project will take longer to complete, and it is usually used for over or under-allocation of resources. In comparison, in resource smoothing, the end date of the activities doesn't change, so given the date that you have, you're just readjusting the schedule a little bit so that the amount of work the resource has to do from week by week is roughly the same. So there's no change to the critical path. The activities can be delayed based on how much float you have in that specific activity, and it is usually used to even out uneven allocations. So major difference: resource leveling changes the end date, resource smoothing does not change the end date. You're just adjusting uneven allocations. So I hope you learned a lot from this video. That is the difference between resource leveling and resource smoothing. And if you want to learn more tips like this, and if you want to learn how you can pass your PMP certification on your first try and within the next 6 weeks, we will teach you all the strategies you need on our free masterclass. Simply sign up at www.examspm.com/free. We're going to go over how to read the process chart, go over how you can interpret all the ITTOs or the Pinball Guide, the exact strategies you need to use, study plan you, you can use even if you're working a full-time job. A lot of really great stuff is going to be covered on this free masterclass. So join us at examspm.com/free, and I can't wait to see you there. Thank you so much for joining us today.