what does it mean if projects are mutually exclusive 
in business managers and directors often need to plan resource allocation if a company is building a bridge and a skyscraper and both projects require an extremely specialized piece of equipment and only one exists in the world it would mean that these projects are mutually exclusive as that piece of equipment cannot be used by both projects at the same time this idea can be extended to consider specialized professionals software systems which cannot run both mac and windows and allocated budgets 