[lopsa-discuss] Interruptions coverage...

[John Stoffel]

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

See my other reply in the thread for my take.

I liked the half day shifts actually, I thought it spread the load
around nicely.  I didn't like morning shifts though, since Bob made us
start at 8am, which isn't my best time.  Conversely, the afternoon
shift was fine with me, since I didn't mind staying until 6pm.  

I've been surprised by how many replys have said that they used full
day shifts, instead of half day shifts.  Not that I didn't do back to
back shifts at times, but generally it let us be more flexible around
sysadmin schedules to go by half days.  

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

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

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

After Bob had moved on, we ended up putting in RT 1.0.7
(www.bestpractical.com) and that also made a difference, since it
tracked all email to the single group email and turned them into
tickets.  It really helped as we grew to almost 1,000 people at one
site.  

John