Planning projects with scarce resources: Yesterday, today and tomorrow’s research challenges

Abstract

This paper is an invited request to describe the main research challenges in the domain of resource-constrained project scheduling. The paper is split up in three parts. In today’s challenges, research endeavors that have received a significant, but still not enough, attention have been described. In tomorrow’s research challenges, some promising research avenues for future research have been given. Finally, in yesterday’s challenge, a research topic that started decades ago, is said to have still a huge potential in tomorrow’s research agenda. This paper does not intend to give a full literature overview, nor a summary of all possible research paths. Instead, it is inspired from the author’s experience in academic research and practical consultancy and it serves as a personal opinion on a non-exhaustive set of promising research avenues, rather than giving a full literature-based advice for future research directions.