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design-on-call-rotation

pjt222
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Designaidesign

About

This skill helps developers design sustainable on-call rotations with balanced schedules, escalation policies, and fatigue management. It's useful for initial setup, team scaling, or addressing burnout and handoff issues. The skill provides structured guidance to maintain coverage while minimizing engineer burnout.

Quick Install

Claude Code

Recommended
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npx skills add pjt222/agent-almanac -a claude-code
Plugin CommandAlternative
/plugin add https://github.com/pjt222/agent-almanac
Git CloneAlternative
git clone https://github.com/pjt222/agent-almanac.git ~/.claude/skills/design-on-call-rotation

Copy and paste this command in Claude Code to install this skill

Documentation

設計值班輪替

創一可持之值班表,衡覆蓋之需與工程師之安。

適用時機

  • 首立值班
  • 團隊由 2-3 擴至 5+ 工程師
  • 治值班過勞或警示疲勞
  • 改事件回應時間
  • 事後覆盤辨交接之缺

輸入

  • 必要:團隊人數與時區
  • 必要:服務 SLA 要求(回應時間、覆蓋時段)
  • 選擇:歷史事件量與時點
  • 選擇:值班補償之預算
  • 選擇:現有值班工具(PagerDuty、Opsgenie)

步驟

步驟一:定輪替表

依團隊人數擇輪替之長:

## Rotation Models

### Weekly Rotation (5+ person team)
- **Length**: 7 days (Monday 09:00 to Monday 09:00)
- **Pros**: Predictable, easy to plan around
- **Cons**: Whole week disrupted if alerts are frequent

### 12-Hour Split (3-4 person team)
- **Day shift**: 08:00-20:00 local time
- **Night shift**: 20:00-08:00 local time
- **Pros**: Shared burden, night coverage paid differently
- **Cons**: More handoffs, coordination needed

### Follow-the-Sun (Global team)
- **APAC**: 00:00-08:00 UTC
- **EMEA**: 08:00-16:00 UTC
- **Americas**: 16:00-00:00 UTC
- **Pros**: No night shifts, timezone-aligned
- **Cons**: Requires distributed team

### Two-Tier (Senior/Junior split)
- **Primary**: Junior engineers (first responder)
- **Secondary**: Senior engineers (escalation)
- **Pros**: Training opportunity, lighter senior load
- **Cons**: Risk of junior burnout

5 人團隊之示例表:

Week 1: Alice (Primary), Bob (Secondary)
Week 2: Charlie (Primary), Diana (Secondary)
Week 3: Eve (Primary), Alice (Secondary)
Week 4: Bob (Primary), Charlie (Secondary)
Week 5: Diana (Primary), Eve (Secondary)

預期: 輪替公平,提供 24/7 覆蓋。

失敗時: 若有覆蓋缺口,增工程師或將 SLA 降至僅工作時間。

步驟二:配升級策略

於 PagerDuty/Opsgenie 設分層升級:

# PagerDuty escalation policy (YAML representation)
escalation_policy:
  name: "Production Services"
  repeat_enabled: true
  num_loops: 3

  escalation_rules:
    - id: primary
      escalation_delay_in_minutes: 0
      targets:
        - type: schedule
          id: primary_on_call_schedule

    - id: secondary
      escalation_delay_in_minutes: 15
      targets:
        - type: schedule
          id: secondary_on_call_schedule

    - id: manager
      escalation_delay_in_minutes: 30
      targets:
        - type: user
          id: engineering_manager

繪升級流程圖:

Alert Fires
    ↓
Primary On-Call Paged
    ↓
Wait 15 minutes (no ack)
    ↓
Secondary On-Call Paged
    ↓
Wait 15 minutes (no ack)
    ↓
Manager Paged
    ↓
Repeat cycle (max 3 times)

預期: 升級路徑清晰,延遲合理。

失敗時: 升級頻發時,縮短確認窗或查警示質量。

步驟三:定交接程序

建結構化之交接清單:

## On-Call Handoff Checklist

### Outgoing On-Call
- [ ] Update incident log with any ongoing issues
- [ ] Document any workarounds or known issues
- [ ] Share any alerts that are "noisy but safe to ignore" temporarily
- [ ] Note any upcoming deploys or maintenance windows
- [ ] Provide context on any flapping alerts

### Incoming On-Call
- [ ] Review incident log from previous shift
- [ ] Check for any ongoing incidents
- [ ] Verify PagerDuty/Opsgenie has correct contact info
- [ ] Test alert delivery (send test page to yourself)
- [ ] Review recent deploys and release notes
- [ ] Check capacity metrics for any concerning trends

### Handoff Meeting (15 min)
- Review any incidents from past week
- Discuss any changes to systems or runbooks
- Questions and clarifications

自動發交接提醒:

# Slack reminder script
curl -X POST https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SLACK_BOT_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "channel": "#on-call",
    "text": "On-call handoff in 1 hour. Outgoing: @alice, Incoming: @bob. Please use the handoff checklist: https://wiki.company.com/oncall-handoff"
  }'

預期: 知識順暢移交,班次之間無信息遺漏。

失敗時: 事件重發因接班者未知變通時,交接須強制為必。

步驟四:施疲勞管理

立規以防過勞:

## Fatigue Prevention Rules

### Alert Volume Limits
- **Threshold**: Max 5 pages per night (22:00-06:00)
- **Action**: If exceeded, trigger incident review next day
- **Goal**: Reduce noisy alerts that disrupt sleep

### Time Off After Major Incident
- **Rule**: If on-call handles P1 incident >2 hours overnight, they get comp time
- **Amount**: Equal to incident duration (e.g., 3-hour incident = 3 hours off)
- **Scheduling**: Must be taken within 2 weeks

### Maximum Consecutive Weeks
- **Limit**: No more than 2 consecutive weeks on-call
- **Reason**: Prevents exhaustion from extended coverage

### Minimum Rest Between Rotations
- **Cooldown**: At least 2 weeks between primary rotations
- **Exception**: Emergency coverage (requires manager approval)

### Vacation Protection
- **Rule**: No on-call during scheduled vacation
- **Process**: Mark as "Out of Office" in PagerDuty 2 weeks in advance
- **Swap**: Coordinate swap with team, update schedule

追蹤警示疲勞指標:

# Alerts per on-call engineer per week
count(ALERTS{alertstate="firing"}) by (oncall_engineer)

# Nighttime pages (22:00-06:00 local)
count(ALERTS{alertstate="firing", hour_of_day>=22 or hour_of_day<6})

# Time to acknowledge (should be <5 min during business hours)
histogram_quantile(0.95, rate(alert_ack_duration_seconds_bucket[7d]))

預期: 值班負擔可持,工程師無長期疲憊。

失敗時: 縱有規而仍過勞時,減警示量或增員。

步驟五:錄運行手冊與升級聯絡

建值班速查指南:

# On-Call Quick Reference

## Emergency Contacts
- **Engineering Manager**: Alice Smith, +1-555-0100
- **CTO**: Bob Johnson, +1-555-0200
- **Security Team**: [email protected], +1-555-0300
- **Cloud Provider Support**: AWS Support Case Portal

## Common Runbooks
- [Database Connection Pool Exhaustion](https://wiki/runbook-db-pool)
- [High API Latency](https://wiki/runbook-api-latency)
- [Disk Space Full](https://wiki/runbook-disk-full)
- [SSL Certificate Expiration](https://wiki/runbook-ssl-renewal)

## Access & Credentials
- **Production AWS**: SSO via company.okta.com
- **Kubernetes**: `kubectl --context production`
- **Database**: Read-only access via Bastion host
- **Secrets**: 1Password vault "On-Call Production"

## Escalation Decision Tree
- **P1 (Service Down)**: Immediate response, escalate to manager after 30min
- **P2 (Degraded)**: Response within 15min, escalate if not resolved in 1 hour
- **P3 (Warning)**: Acknowledge, resolve during business hours
- **Security Incident**: Immediately escalate to Security Team, don't investigate alone

預期: 值班者能於 2 分鐘內尋得所需之信息。

失敗時: 工程師屢問「X 在何處?」時,文檔須集中。

步驟六:定期值班回顧

每月審值班體驗:

## On-Call Retrospective Agenda (Monthly)

### Metrics Review (15 min)
- Total alerts: [X] (target: <50/week)
- Nighttime pages: [Y] (target: <5/week)
- Mean time to acknowledge: [Z] (target: <5 min)
- Incidents by severity: P1: [A], P2: [B], P3: [C]

### Qualitative Feedback (20 min)
- What was the most challenging incident?
- Which alerts were noisy/low-value?
- Were runbooks helpful? Which need updates?
- Any gaps in monitoring or alerting?

### Action Items (10 min)
- Fix noisy alerts identified
- Update runbooks that were incomplete
- Adjust rotation schedule if needed
- Plan alert tuning work

### Recognition (5 min)
- Shout-outs for excellent incident response
- Share learnings from interesting incidents

追蹤長期之改進:

# Generate monthly on-call report
cat > oncall_report_2025-02.md <<EOF
# On-Call Report: February 2025

## Key Metrics
- **Total Alerts**: 38 (down from 52 in January)
- **Nighttime Pages**: 4 (within target)
- **P1 Incidents**: 1 (database outage, 45min MTTR)
- **P2 Incidents**: 3 (all resolved <1 hour)

## Improvements Made
- Tuned CPU alert threshold (reduced false positives by 40%)
- Added runbook for Redis cache failures
- Implemented log rotation (prevented disk full alerts)

## Upcoming Changes
- Migrate to follow-the-sun rotation (Q2)
- Add Slack alert integration (in progress)
EOF

預期: 值班體驗逐月改善,警示量漸減。

失敗時: 指標不改時,上呈領導。或須暫停功能開發以治運維之疾。

驗證

  • 輪替表涵蓋所有所需時段(24/7 或工作時間)
  • 升級策略已測(發測試警示)
  • 交接程序已錄並共享於團隊
  • 疲勞管理規則已成文
  • 值班速查指南完備可取
  • 月度回顧已排
  • 值班補償已核(若適用)

常見陷阱

  • 工程師太少:3 或以下人員,則每 2-3 週即值班一次,不可持。每週輪替至少 5 人。
  • 升級無延遲:立即升級主管徒耗資深者之時。先給予 15 分鐘回應。
  • 省略交接:無上下文移交致錯重現。交接須為必。
  • 忽警示疲勞:工程師因雜音而忽警示,則要事致漏。須積極調校。
  • 無補償:無薪或補休之值班滋怨。預算須為之留。

相關技能

  • configure-alerting-rules - 減致疲勞之警示噪音
  • write-incident-runbook - 建值班班次中所引之運行手冊

GitHub Repository

pjt222/agent-almanac
Path: i18n/wenyan-lite/skills/design-on-call-rotation
0
agentsagentskillsai-assisted-developmentclaude-codeskillsteams

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