Scheduling static tasks on parallel architectures is a basic problem arising in the design of parallel algorithms. This NP-complete problem has been widely investigated in the literature and remains one of the most challenging questions in the field. Among the resolution methods for this type of problems, the taboo search technique is of particular interest. Based on this technique, two algorithms are proposed and tested on a sample of instances in order to be compared experimentally with other well-known algorithms. The results clearly indicate good overall performances of our algorithms. Next, some NP-completeness results are established showing that this problem is intractable for approximation, even for some restricted cases bearing a clear relation to the instances treated experimentally in this work.