[lopsa-discuss] Interruptions coverage...

[Robert Gill]

In reference to Benji's question on dealing with interruptions Tom Perrine <
tperrine at scea.com> wrote:
>
> Each day there is a "sysadmin in the NOC", who answers all incoming
> trouble tickets, random phone calls, and emails to "sysadmin" (a
> legacy email address).  They are acting as what Tom L calls the
> "mutual interruption shield" for the rest of the department.  They are
> expected to handle almost all interruptions, but will sometimes have to
> escalate to someone else for specialized stuff.
>
> In exchange for a day of interruptions, they get 4 days of project
> time.
>

Last time I was a manager we did something similar.  We ran in half day
segments with 5 to 6 admins.  I thought it worked well.  I do believe the
guys who worked for me hated it. :-)   If John Stoffel is on the list he can
give us the thumbs up or down and commentary.

In order to facilitate the single point of contact we had a hotline - an
extension that rang on each person's phone which the on-rotation person was
expected to answer.  We also had a single e-mail address for requesting
help; again the on-rotation person was expected to deal with the issues as
they came in.  We didn't really have a ticketing system, just a rudimentary
script that let us keep track of who was working on what.

The rotation plan did not avoid walk-up interruptions nor did it help with
what I call Favorite Admin Syndrome.

Everyone in the group made use of IM.  It allowed the rotation guy to shoot
a quick message to someone when he didn't know the immediate answer to a
problem.

Peace,
Bob Gill
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