There are several visual cues in your Microsoft Project schedule that will immediately identify that there are resource overallocations that need to be addressed.

In task views, such as the Gantt Chart view, red ‘burning man’ icons are displayed in the Indicators column next to some of the tasks. This means that at least one resource that is assigned to that task is overallocated during the time that task is taking place.

In your resource views, such as the Resource Usage view and Resource Sheet, any resources that show up in red have an overallocation at some point in the project. In the Resource Usage view, the hours in the time-phased grid will also show in red during times of overallocation.

The Resource Usage and Task Usage views allow you to view detailed information about resource assignments and overallocations.

Task Usage View

This view shows all tasks, and for each task, will also display the resources that are assigned to it. Each resource row represents an individual assignment.

The total Work for each resource on each task is displayed in the Work column, and summed up to the total Work at the task level, as well as to each of the summary levels.

The grid displays the time-phased assignments. You may use any of the Zoom options to change the timescale for the grid.

Resource Usage View

The Resource Usage view is an excellent way to focus in on exactly what work the overallocated resources have been assigned to.

At the top of this view is a list of task rows that have no resource assignments identified as Unassigned. In the example, everything that is Unassigned is a milestone. Milestones should not have resources assigned to them, so this is what you should expect to see.

Following the Unassigned items, are each of the resources from the Resource Sheet and all of the tasks that they are assigned to.

You may expand and collapse the tasks under each of the resources as you analyze any overallocations.

The Work column shows the total Work assigned to the resource on each task. Work is also summed up for the resource, showing the total amount across all tasks.

You may insert additional field columns into the tables for the Task Usage and the Resource Usage views. A useful field to add is the Peak Units field.

You may also modify the grid to add additional fields.

To modify the grid, right-click in the grid area and select from the field list shown, or select Detail Styles to see more fields.

Adding the Peak Units field to the grid, can assist with analysis.

Resource Leveling

Once you have identified and analyzed any overallocations, the next step to decide whether leveling is needed.

If you have a minimal number of hours of overallocation, and they do not last for extended periods of time, some discussion and negotiation with the affected team members may be able to resolve it. However, if you have significant overallocations, or they last for extended periods of time, you will need to level the resource workloads.

Organizations approach this in a number of different ways. The simplest resolution, if you have availability on other resources that could perform the overallocated tasks, is to reassign some of the work to those other resources. If that isn’t an option, in some organizations, the Project Managers will manually move tasks based on their analysis of the schedule. Optionally, Microsoft Project has an automated resource leveling functionality that is used by many organizations.

Understanding how Microsoft Project does automated leveling is critical to ensuring you get the results expected – even if they are not the results you would like!!

Resource leveling in Microsoft Project moves tasks to eliminate, or at least minimize, overallocations based on the requirements we have defined for each task in our project. Microsoft Project uses the Max. Units value that was entered into the Resource Sheet, and pushes tasks out to ensure that the total assignment across all tasks does not exceed the Max. Units value for that resource.

Leveling will not change the resource assignment on a task to resolve overallocations. This also means that it will not be able to level any task that has an assignment on it that exceeds the resource’s Max. Units in the Resource Sheet.

The first step in resource leveling is to set the Leveling Options on the Resource ribbon in the Level section.

Following are options and recommendations for Leveling Options:

– Leveling calculations should always be set to Manual. Otherwise, the project is re-leveled every time you make a change.

– Look for overallocations on a Day by Day basis tells Microsoft Project to to consider a resource overallocated if they have more work assigned in a single day than they have availability.

If you are looking for a broader overview of your resource requirements versus availabilities you may also try out leveling on a Week by Week basis. This is often used in early planning, or to look at resources information further out in the future. Resources are considered overallocated only if their total Work in an entire week is greater than their available Work for the entire week.

– You always want to Clear leveling values for leveling so make sure that box stays checked. This will remove any leveling delays before Microsoft Project begins the new leveling process.

– Leveling range for ‘For leveling’ enables you to level the entire project or a specified time span.

Typically, you will level the entire project. However, there may be times for a long project that you want to only level a near-term portion of the project. As work begins on the project some tasks typically move out and their requirements move as well, so resolving over allocations at a detailed level for tasks that are far in the future, may not be valuable.

– Leveling order: tells Microsoft Project what prioritization to use in the leveling process.

There is a task field called Priority that by default is set to 500 for all tasks. You may assign a higher Priority value if there are tasks in your project that you wish to be scheduled before other competing tasks. The maximum value for Priority is 1,000. However, tasks with Priority set to 1,000 will not be leveled. If you want all tasks to be leveled, but want to assign a higher Priority to some tasks, use a value such as 700, 800, or 900. Priority may be set in the Task Information dialog under the General tab, or by inserting the Priority field into your table.

If you modify any of the Priority values you should select Priority, Standard for your leveling order. Otherwise, you can leave the default of Standard.

– Level only within available slack tells Microsoft Project that tasks may be moved, but only within their Total Slack. This will ensure that your project finish date does not move past the due date that we assigned with the Must Finish On constraint.

– Typically the remaining options should be unchecked.

Once the options have been set, select the Level All button in the Level section, on the Resource ribbon.

One of the key Leveling Options to understand is the checkbox specifying to Level only within available slack. By default, with that option unchecked, Microsoft Project does what we call a Resource Limited leveling. This means that tasks will be moved out as late as needed so that they are scheduled without ANY overallocation. This typically results in a significant delay in when the project can be completed.

In most projects, the project finish date has been set and cannot be changed. To level our project, but hold the due date date, we use Time Limited leveling. Time Limited leveling is performed by checking the box next to Level only within available slack. When this option is selected, Microsoft Project will move tasks to eliminate, or at least reduce, their overallocation, but only within the available Total Slack. Remember, Total Slack is the number of working days that a path may slip or extend without impacting the project due date. Microsoft Project will use up the Total Slack on a task (and its path), but not cause the critical path to go negative. This option will often leave some remaining overallocations. These should be analyzed to see how they can be resolved.

We will look at the difference in leveling our project, changing only that option.

Before leveling, we see with the Resource Usage view (upper screenshot), that we have four resources overallocated (Resource Name and Work shown in red) – significantly in certain time periods.

The Gantt Chart view (lower screenshot) shows us that we have 15 tasks with at least one resource overallocated during the time they are schedule to occur.

The current Finish on the Project Finish milestone is 9/7/17 and the due date on the Target Complete milestone is 9/22/17. We have 11 days of Total Slack on our critical path.

The Leveling Options are set as shown below with Level only within available slack unchecked.

We select the Level All button with the following results.

No resources are overallocated. No ‘burning man’ icons remain.

However, the end date of our project has been delayed so that the current Finish on the Project Finish milestone is now 10/4/17. This is 8 working days AFTER the project due date. We can see this shown as -8 days in Total Slack.

Next we will level the project with the Level only within available slack option checked.

First we Clear Leveling using the button in the Level section on the Resource ribbon.

Then, the Leveling Options are set as shown below.

We select the Level All button. As Microsoft Project is leveling, we are prompted with dialogs such as the following. We may Skip them individually, or Skip All.

Because we told Microsoft Project not to push the end date, we can expect their will be some remaining overallocations that cannot be resolved.

Below are the results.

We have one remaining resource with overallocations – John Smith. We have three remaining tasks with overallocations.

Again, the current Finish on the Project Finish milestone pushed out, but this time, only to our due date of 9/22/17, not beyond it. We have 0 days of Total Slack on our critical path, but we have not passed our due date.

Now we will focus in on the remaining overallocations to decide how they should be addressed. Using the Resource Usage view, we can see that in addition to his design related tasks, John is currently assigned to help with the procurement of the booth components.

One option may be to assign procurement of the booth components to a different resource. This would resolve the only remaining overallocation we have in our project.

If we have significant overallocations remaining on our project after leveling with the Level only within available slack option checked, we MUST resolve them, or our project will slip, whether the schedule reflects it now or not!!

We must work to develop a realistic schedule, from both a date perspective AND a resource allocation perspective.

We typically try a number of combinations for leveling and analysis to help us decide how to achieve the best results.

We need to make sure that our tasks meet the Total Slack threshold that we have determined for our project. If not, we still have work to do to shorten our schedule. We will discuss schedule compression in detail in the section on Impact Analysis and Corrective Action.

We have been looking at leveling our entire project. However, there are other options that may be used to work through overallocations in your project.

You can level a subset of your resources, or a subset of your tasks using buttons on the Resource ribbon in the Level section.

Level Resource allows you to select one or more resources and will only level based on those resources requirements and availabilities. This is typically used if there are key resources which in the project that are performing tasks that no one else can do, but there is some flexibility in obtaining more of the other types of resources needed.

Level Selection levels only the tasks that you currently have highlighted.

One of the best ways to view the results of resource leveling is the Leveling Gantt view.

Tto access the Leveling Gantt view, right click on the current view name at the left of the screen, and select More Views… Then select Leveling Gantt and click Apply.

The Leveling Gantt displays a field column called Leveling Delay. Leveling Delay shows the number of days, expressed in elapsed days (not working days), that a task was delayed in order to find enough availability for that task.

In the Gantt Chart area, the tan bar spans the pre-leveled dates, and the light blue bar spans the leveled dates (which are our new Start and Finish dates). The thin lower tan bar shows the Leveling Delay.

If we focus in on some tasks further down in the schedule, we see that there are some tasks that have a later current (blue bar) schedule than their pre-leveled (tan bar) schedule, but show 0ed for their Leveling Delay.

This tells us that these tasks were delayed due only to their predecessors being delayed. Then when Microsoft Project looked for availability for the new dates, there was enough of the required resources. The task did not have any delay based on the leveling.

Remember, Leveling Delay shows the number of days, that a task was delayed in order to find enough availability for THAT task.