Scheduling means assigning processor time to different logically executable computations or, less formally, "making this happen after that". Even though the term "scheduling" is commonly used in a limited context like referring to system components called runtime schedulers, scheduling in a general sense as composing computations in time is an intrinsic part of computing.

Since scheduling assigns a limited resource (processor time), the logic it follows is based on balancing conflicting goals or priorities. The typical goals in concurrency modeling are maximizing throughput (total amount of computation) or fairness (prioritizing or equalizing computation) or minimizing response time (time before beginning execution) or latency (time before completing execution).