| 9 | Scheduling activities in a project is an area of active research in operational research (or operations research, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research OR]) (cf. [http://books.google.com/books?id=pHetPl2LOYgC&lpg=PA153&ots=rKKZ7Lv2On&dq=pslib%20project%20scheduling&pg=PP1 Project Scheduling]) and has been established to be [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NP-hard NP hard]. (It should be noted that it is an ''optimal'' solution that is hard compute. Most research strives to get 2-3% better make span out of a well-defined, complex project. If you have a small or dynamic project or if your estimates are routinely off by 5-10%, you won't see the benefit of such high-powered scheduling.) |