Project Method

The Project solving method is similar to the Order solving method except that certain items (usually tasks) must precede others. The Project solving method is especially useful in project management, where an ordering of the tasks is required but there are precedence relationships.

When using the Project solving method, it is best to have the adjustable cell range include task indexes (1 through the number of tasks) in a single column (as demonstrated in Figure 1, right).

After the adjustable cells have been specified, the location of any precedent tasks must be configured in the Preceding Tasks field of the Adjustable Cell Group Settings window.  Preceding Tasks is a table of cells that describes which tasks must be completed before other tasks. This is illustrated in the example at right (Figure 1), where the goal is to find the best ordering of town to visit. For example, town 5 has precedents 32 and 8, so town 5 can’t be visited until towns 32 and 8 have both been visitied.

The precedence tasks range should be specified as being n rows by m columns, where n is the total number of tasks (adjustable cells), and m is the largest number of precedents for any one task.