Tom has 14 open tickets across 3 projects · 72h estimated. To cover them by July 15 you need ~18h/week of senior eng capacity. Three candidates can absorb this without going over 90% load. Jin is the best match — already on 2 of Tom's projects, has 22h/week free, and shares context.
How I figured this out · 4 queries
// 1 · Pull Tom's open tickets across active projects FROM projects.tickets t JOIN hr.employees e ON t.assignee = e.id WHERE e.email = 'tom.reyes@acme.co' AND t.status != 'done' → 14 tickets · 72h est · 3 projects // 2 · Net capacity per senior engineer, May 26 → Jul 14 SELECT emp_id, contracted_hrs - approved_pto - sprint_assigned FROM capacity.weekly_view WHERE level >= 'senior' AND available_hrs > 0 → Jin 22h · Ravi 6h · Devon 30h (ramping) // 3 · Skill / context overlap from git history (last 90d) SELECT author, files_touched ∩ tom_files FROM git.commits → Jin: 12 overlapping commits · Ravi: 0 · Devon: 0 // 4 · Cross-check: PTO conflicts in the recovery window SELECT emp_id, dates FROM hr.approved_leave WHERE dates BETWEEN '2026-05-26' AND '2026-07-14' → no conflicts for top 3 candidates
Tickets stay open ~6 weeks longer · two are on the Acme migration critical path which slips deadline by 9 business days. Late penalty in the Acme contract is $2,000/day after Jun 15 — that's $18,000 of contractual exposure plus reputational risk. Net cost beats the reassignment plan by $11,400.
Acme delivers on time
Devon learns the codebase
No contractual penalties
Reputational risk · scored 7/10
Devon stalls on onboarding
$11,400 worse than option A
Project burn through May 19 · $72,400 across 396 logged hours. That's 80% of the $90k contract for 38% of the work completed. Forecasted close cost is $104,200 — 16% over budget. Margin projects to -15.8%.
Why over budget: SYM-441 (payroll ETL) consumed 24h vs 18h estimated, and a recent scope change request adds 40h that hasn't been billed. A change-order to Acme for $7,400 would bring you back to +2.5% margin. Want me to draft the change-order email?