Question

Illustrate and Explain the difference between Resource levelling and Resource Allocation

Answer 1

Resource allocation is one of the primary tasks carried out in preparation for a project where a certain set of resources are committed to a project based on broad capacity requirements. Usually these would be in terms of labour (in man hours) across different skills that have been identified to carry out the project end-to-end and material/equipment needed during the course of the project. E.g. for a typical software project the manager may allocate a Business Analyst for 3 months, A team of 1 Design Expert for a month, 3 coders and 2 testers for 4 months. The resources in terms of workstations, disk drives, and other devices may be allocated for the project.

Resource Levelling is carried out after initial resource allocation to ensure that resources are consumed effectively and efficiently over the project duration and can look to minimize total effort and cost such that the project is feasible and viable at all points. One of the key objectives is to ensure that resources are available subject to internal constraints and also satisfy all interdependencies between the entities involved in the project. A typical example is to build a project network as per planned task timelines and use the critical path method to optimize total time and manage interdependencies.