Designing a Fair On-Call Rotation

PlatformOps has 6 engineers with uneven availability and a fairness requirement. The manager must design the rotation algorithm on paper — as pseudocode or a flowchart — before any scheduling tool is used.

# Aplly.xyz Case Study Submission

## Title
Designing a Fair On-Call Rotation

## Type
Operations Management

## Difficulty
Intermediate

## Estimated Time
60 minutes

## Overview
PlatformOps has 6 engineers with uneven availability and a fairness requirement. The manager must design the rotation algorithm on paper — as pseudocode or a flowchart — before any scheduling tool is used.

## Case Details

Function Focus: Constraint-based scheduling logic, algorithm design

Scenario:
Two engineers have blackout weeks (approved leave), one works part-time (50% load), and management has mandated that no one can be on-call two weeks in a row. Additionally, engineers who carried a heavier on-call load in the past quarter should be assigned fewer weeks this quarter to correct the imbalance.

Dataset Structure:
- Engineer, Availability %, Blackout Weeks, Past-Quarter On-Call Count

Tasks:
1. Design a rule-based algorithm (explicitly not a random draw) for assigning 12 weeks of on-call coverage
2. Write the algorithm as pseudocode or a hand-drawn flowchart before writing the schedule
3. Apply your algorithm manually, week by week, to produce the full 12-week schedule
4. State the fairness metric you used to validate the final output (e.g., variance in total weeks assigned, weighted by availability)

Expected Output:
Pseudocode or flowchart + the resulting 12-week schedule + a short fairness justification.

Evaluation Criteria:
Logical soundness of the algorithm, correct handling of all constraints (blackout weeks, part-time load, no-consecutive-weeks rule, historical rebalancing), and clarity of the fairness metric.

## Data Sources

| Engineer | Availability | Blackout Weeks | Past-Quarter On-Call Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 100% | None | 4 |
| B | 100% | Weeks 5–6 | 3 |
| C | 50% | None | 2 |
| D | 100% | Week 9 | 5 |
| E | 100% | None | 3 |
| F | 100% | Weeks 1–2 | 3 |

Schedule horizon: 12 weeks
Hard constraints: No engineer on-call two consecutive weeks; part-time engineer (C) assigned at most 6 of 12 weeks; blacked-out weeks are non-negotiable.

## Solution Frameworks
Constraint scheduling, round-robin with weighted correction, greedy assignment with backtracking

## Solver Guidance & Tutorials
Link to: "Constraint-Based Scheduling for Managers (No Code Required)" tutorial

## What You'll Learn
- Manual algorithm design under multiple constraints
- Constraint satisfaction reasoning without a solver library
- Building and defending a fairness metric

## Tags
on-call scheduling, algorithms, operations management, constraint satisfaction

## Registration Links
- Register as Solver
- Register as Evaluator