Total-Order and Partial-Order Planning: A Comparative Analysis
  For many years, the intuitions underlying partial-order planning were largely taken for granted. Only in the past few years has there been renewed interest in the fundamental principles underlying this paradigm. In this paper, we present a rigorous comparative analysis of partial-order and total-order planning by focusing on two specific planners that can be directly compared. We show that there are some subtle assumptions that underly the wide-spread intuitions regarding the supposed efficiency of partial-order planning. For instance, the superiority of partial-order planning can depend critically upon the search strategy and the structure of the search space. Understanding the underlying assumptions is crucial for constructing efficient planners. 
S. Minton, J. Bresina, M. Drummond