Multiple-Deadline Capacity Allocator

Worked example

Two tasks each need 8 hours of work, one due January 10 and one due January 20, with 8 hours of daily capacity available. The earliest deadline first policy gives all of day one's capacity to the January 10 task, finishing it that same day, then gives all of day two's capacity to the remaining task, finishing it the next day. Neither task waits behind the other unnecessarily, and both finish well before their own deadline in this example, though a heavier workload or a tighter deadline can easily leave a later task finishing after its own stated date, which the allocator reports directly rather than hiding behind an optimistic average.

Common mistakes

• Assuming capacity splits evenly across every open task each day. It does not. Earliest deadline first gives full priority to the most urgent task before any capacity reaches the next one.
• Ignoring a task that shows no completion date at all. That means the simulated window ran out before that task's work was ever finished.

Limitations

This is a deterministic simulation of one stated policy, always earliest deadline first, not an optimizer that finds the best possible schedule and not a claim about how any real team should actually be managed or evaluated.