Often a resource follows a certain hourly pattern over the life of a task. For example, when starting a task, a resource may do some research that takes only half days for the first few days. Then, during the middle of the task, that resource might work whole days, and near the end, scale down to half days again.
You can closely match a resource’s assigned hours on a task to the actual hours spent on the task each day by using resource contouring. With Microsoft Project, you can select one of several predefined resource contours to apply to a particular resource working on a particular task. You pick the contour that best matches the way the resource will actually work on the task. This allows you to fine-tune a resource’s allocated hours, possibly freeing up time so that resource can help on a different task.