On-Call Rotation Generator

Rotate holiday coverage separately. If someone covers Christmas, they get priority for lighter duty next. Some teams use volunteer-first, then fill gaps.

Use follow-the-sun: US team handles their business hours, EU team handles theirs. Overlap periods need clear handoff procedures.

Allow team members to swap shifts directly. Use a shared calendar or tool. Require swaps to be recorded (not just verbal) so escalation works.

A chain of contacts if the primary doesn't respond. Typically: primary on-call (5 min) → secondary on-call (10 min) → team lead (15 min) → manager.

Track: number of pages per rotation, time of pages (business hours vs sleep), MTTA (time to acknowledge), and total hours spent on incidents.

Limit on-call to 1 week per month max. Compensate appropriately. Reduce noise (fix flapping alerts). Provide comp time after heavy rotations.

The problem is your alerts, not your people. Fix noisy alerts, automate common remediations, and invest in reliability to reduce incident frequency.

Yes, account for it. On-call engineers should have reduced sprint commitments (20-30% less). Interruptions kill deep work.

Shadow shifts (observe for 1-2 rotations), documented runbooks, pair on first incidents, and a buddy system. Never throw someone in cold.

Warden provides clear, actionable alerts with context. 30-second detection means faster response. Fewer false positives means less alert fatigue and better on-call quality of life.