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Worked-example setupScope and assumptions
- Harbor Components and all people, scores, and tasks are fictional teaching facts.
- The controller has one uninterrupted review block and may complete exactly one feasible task before the lender cutoff.
- Priority points are an illustrative ranking device within this decision only; they are not dollars, utility, or a universal scoring system.
- Period
- Fictional Thursday afternoon before a lender reporting cutoff
- Units
- Illustrative priority points and one review block
- Rounding
- Whole priority points
The queue
Harbor Components' controller has one uninterrupted review block before a lender-reporting cutoff. Four tasks appear in the queue. The acquisition model would score highest if its third-party diligence file had arrived, but that file will not be available before the cutoff.
| Task | Priority points | Feasible now? | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| Covenant review | 90 | Yes | Required records are complete |
| Vendor control exception | 75 | Yes | Exception packet is available |
| Acquisition model | 95 | No | Required diligence file is unavailable |
| Board-deck formatting | 30 | Yes | Draft and source files are available |
Priority points are supplied teaching facts. A real organization would need to justify its scoring criteria, conflicts, legal duties, and escalation rules.
Reason from constraint to cost
- Name scarcity. One review block has several competing feasible uses. Harbor need not be poor for time and attention to be scarce.
- Remove infeasible options. The acquisition model cannot be completed with the required evidence. Its 95 points do not make it the forgone alternative.
- Select within the feasible set. The covenant review has the highest supplied score among available tasks, so it is selected under the stated objective.
- Identify the next-best forgone use. If the covenant review disappeared, the controller would perform the 75-point vendor control review.
The opportunity cost is therefore 75 priority points on this supplied scale. It is not 200 points from adding every unselected row. One review block could not have completed all three alternatives.
Reconciliation and interpretation
The feasible set contains three tasks and excludes one. The selected task's score exceeds the next-best feasible score by 15 points, which checks the ranking but does not convert the points into dollars or prove that the scoring model is well designed.
The example supports a bounded queue decision. It does not establish that covenant work is always more important than control work, that the lender deadline overrides every ethical duty, or that the controller should ignore new evidence arriving before the decision is executed.
Common wrong paths
- Choose the 95-point model: it is outside the feasible set.
- Add every rejected score: opportunity cost is the next-best feasible use, not the sum of mutually exclusive alternatives.
- Call the points dollars: the value basis is an illustrative ordinal decision score and must not be silently reinterpreted.
Verified calculation · economics foundations analysis
The curriculum loader recomputed this example before it entered the site build. Expand any structured input to inspect the stated facts.
- choices
- 1 field
Inspect data
{
"harbor_review_queue": {
"alternatives": {
"acquisition_model": {
"feasible": false,
"value": 95
},
"board_deck_formatting": {
"feasible": true,
"value": 30
},
"covenant_review": {
"feasible": true,
"value": 90
},
"vendor_control_exception": {
"feasible": true,
"value": 75
}
},
"selected": "covenant_review",
"value_basis": "illustrative priority points for the controller's stated reporting objective"
}
}Recomputed result
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| feasible alternative count | 3 |
| infeasible alternative count | 1 |
| next best feasible value | 75 |
| opportunity cost | 75 |
| selected value | 90 |
| selected value less opportunity cost | 15 |