One moved game. How many people move with it?

A study design for measuring the real disruption of rescheduling after publication.

Question

Which types of schedule changes create the most operational disruption? Counting moved games is a useful starting point, but a single move can involve two teams, venue staff, officials, travel arrangements, and dependent games.

Define the unit of change

Store an immutable before-and-after version. Give the originating incident an identifier so that five edits caused by one venue closure are not mistaken for five independent failures. Record the reason, notice period, affected roles, and approval time.

Measure the work around the game

Track changed games, unique affected teams, reassigned officials, and staff minutes where collection is practical. Record notification delivery and acknowledgement separately. A sent message is not evidence that every recipient has read or accepted it.

Compare candidate repairs using the same original schedule and restrictions. One repair may change fewer games while producing shorter notice or a worse rest imbalance. Display those trade-offs instead of hiding them in an unexplained composite score.

Controls and limitations

Separate emergency venue closures from discretionary team requests. Compare similar incidents and disclose missing acknowledgement or time-tracking data. Avoid collecting participant names when role-level counts answer the question.

Success should mean a feasible, approved repair with understandable consequences. This proposed study would help define disruption more clearly; it would not establish that a particular tool caused better outcomes without an appropriate comparison design.