How to Resolve Project Resource Overloads
Even if your project resource estimates are accurate, people who work on your project team can get overloaded. Consider one or more of the following strategies to eliminate your overcommitment and get your project back on schedule:
Allocate your time unevenly over the duration of one or more activities: Instead of spending the same number of hours on an activity each week, plan to spend more hours some weeks than others.
Suppose you choose to spend your hours unevenly over the duration of Activity 1 by increasing your commitment by 10 hours in the first week and reducing it by 10 hours in the third week. The Person-Loading Graph illustrates how this uneven distribution removes your overcommitment in week 3.
Eliminate a resource overload by changing the allocation of hours over the activity’s life.Take advantage of any slack time that may exist in your assigned activities: Consider starting one or more activities earlier or later.
For example, if Activity 3 has at least one week of slack time remaining after its currently planned end date, you can reduce your total work on the project in week 3 to 40 person-hours by delaying both the start and the end of Task 3 by one week.
Eliminate a resource overload by changing the start and end dates of an activity with slack time.Assign some of the work you were planning to do in week 3 to someone else currently on your project, to a newly assigned team member, or to an external vendor or contractor: Reassigning 10 person-hours of your work in week 3 removes your overcommitment.
Show the total hours that each person will spend on your project in a Summary Person-Loading Chart, a chart that allows you to do the following:
Identify who may be available to share the load of overcommitted people.
Determine the personnel budget for your project by multiplying the number of hours people work on the project by their weighted labor rates.
Display total person-hours for a project in a Summary Person-Loading Chart.
