In Search of the "Perfect" Pager Rotation? 70
jSpectre asks: "At my new job the Unix SA team has increased from 5 to 7. We're trying to work out a new, rotating on-call schedule and everyone has 'perfect' but conflicting ideas. Twelve weeks on and 6 off, 25 weeks on and 10 off. I thought someone out there must have come up with the perfect formula given N number of people you could rotate through the weekdays and weekend most efficiently. My google and web searches have come up with nothing. Does anyone know of a good formula/solution? The requirements are this, we have 7 people (but the forumla should ideally apply to N people) who should rotate through the weekdays (a 24 hour period) and the weekend (a 48 hour period). There is a desginated primary and a secondary person. They should be on for a few weeks and off entirely for a few. Sound like a good thesis/research problem for someone? By the way, Google comes up with a lot of people's schedules if you search for pager rotation. Tisk tisk."
7 people, 7 days in a week . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Re:7 people, 7 days in a week . . . (Score:2)
Re:7 people, 7 days in a week . . . (Score:2)
Re:7 people, 7 days in a week . . . (Score:3, Informative)
Acually, counting the weekend as ONE day works! You then have 7 people and 6 days, which can work out really well. (damed lameness filter won't let me use day numbers, so I'll try for good names)
Day = Person
Monday = Alice
Tues = Bob
Wed = Carol
Thurs = Doug
Fri = Ed
Sat & Sun = Frank
Mon = George
Tues = Alice
Wed = Bob
Thurs = Carol
Fri = Doug
Sat&Sun = Ed
and follow the pattern. What's nice about the pattern is that if your the person stuck with the weekend, you are totally off the next w
Re:7 people, 7 days in a week . . . (Score:2)
Alex
I love it (Score:2, Funny)
Some of us... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Some of us... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Some of us... (Score:2)
In search of the perfect lotto number... (Score:5, Funny)
Does anyone know of a good formula/solution? The requirements are this, I want to win this Powerball® jackpot (but the forumla should ideally apply such that out of the N times I play, I should win at least N-1 times). Sound like a good thesis/research problem for someone? By the way, Google comes up with a lot of pages [google.com] if you search for lucky Powerball® numbers. Tisk tisk.
Re:In search of the perfect lotto number... (Score:2)
Doug
Re:In search of the perfect lotto number... (Score:1)
Good answer. When I win the lotto, I would hore you as my financial assistant.
Re:In search of the perfect lotto number... (Score:1)
Good answer. When I win the lotto, I would hire you as my financial assistant.
Sorry about the typo
Re:In search of the perfect lotto number... (Score:1)
Auction it (Score:5, Interesting)
Or something like that. I'm sure it could be an interesting exercise designing the points system and implementing a web page to handle it.
One more thing, you need some kind of deadline, no changing your mind within a week of duty. But if you get someone to swap, allow that.
Now if you are going to pay for the duty, you want the weekly points awarded based on how much different shifts cost. Maybe factor in seniority also.
Re:Auction it (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm assuming with the pager that people are paid for being on call. I know in my company that wasn't the case and all 'N' employees eventually got jack of the idea until payment was forthcoming.
We rotated on a purely week-by-week basis. Swaps were normally handled amicably, but if you couldn't find anyone to fill in when you wanted them, and you were not on actual annual leave, bad luck.
You know, that sounds almost so self-evident I might patent it as a business process
Re:Auction it (Score:2)
If that were the case, I'd imagine that people would volunteer to be on call, in order to get more $.
More than likely, they're salaried like we all were when I was in IT. It makes better sense to have IT personnel salaried (from a business standpoint) because there may be times that they have to be at the office for an ungodly amount of time.
Case & point: I got to work at 7AM regularly. We were moving our entire datacenter from one b
Re:Auction it (Score:2)
48 hours, non-stop.
When I was an OT-collecting employee, that was WONDERFUL.
Now that I'm salaried, I get The Big Screw. Work 48-hours for us in for free.
Yuck.
Re:Auction it (Score:1)
Agreed. This is largely the reason why the 'swaps' were handled fairly amicably. It's easier to find someone who's willing to take on the job if there's a payoff and not just a drawback.
I'm salaried too (we all were). I don't mind putting in some extra hours for special occasions (ie: your datacentre move), but this was on-call support for a production billing system - 24x366. There's a big difference
Re:Auction it (Score:2)
I'd never get myself into a position where I was the only support guy for 24x365. Not without some SERIOUS incentive!
Re:Auction it (Score:5, Interesting)
mod points just expired, though. Damn!
I'd actually put a twist on the idea... Instead of losing points, have people gain points for doing these duties. (You start at a base 50 points, for example, then auction down for each 4 day/3 day or 5 day/2 day shift.)
now here's the rub... you reverse auction for desirable days/weeks off. (Christmas, Thanksgiving, et al) People use accumulated points to bid for it off. The two that bid the least are primary and secondary, respectively. Those two would then get some percentage of the points bid.
So, for example, I'd have no problem working Christmas and Easter, but I'm taking the two weeks surrounding my birthday off. (This could conflict with Easter, but you get the point.) I'd also bid for the week containing labor day, for example.
Re:Auction it (Score:2)
Re:Auction it (Score:2)
Re:Auction it (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Come on guys (Score:1)
An old sysadmin of mine swore up and down that one shouldn't reuse tapes, since reusing them can lead to data integrity problems and/or mechanical failures in the tape (e.g., tape breakages).
This was several years ago, so tape technology might have improved.
Re:Come on guys (Score:3, Funny)
This Could Really Burn Some on Holidays (Score:4, Insightful)
While the holidays may not effect your business, they do have a storng emotional effect on most staff and it might help to set up the schedule to treat people fairly not just in regular time on/time off, but also in holiday time. For example someone who works Christmas or a 3 day weekend might get an extra week or weekend off some other time.
I've never had to deal with this in the tech field, but when I was in property management, I know anyone on call over holidays always felt at least a little frustrated, but at least they knew they all had to deal with it more or less equally.
An idea (Score:3, Interesting)
A simple system that would work for N people might be the following:
1. Number the people 1..N (or 0..N-1 if you're feeling geeky).
2. The pager starts with person 1. If you need a secondary or tertiary (sp?), then assign to persons 2, 3,
3. If person j takes the call passes the pager on to the next unallocated person in the list, who takes on j's priority (i.e., primary, secondary, etc.); if the primary takes the call and you have secondaries, etc., the secondary becomes the primary and the next unallocated person on the list becomes secondary.
4. Goto 3 (couldn't resist)
Assuming that calls are evenly distributed, then you only have to take a call every N*(call inter-arrival time) units of time.
You could change around the "who gets primary next" rule in various ways.
Assuming that you don't get more than one call on a weekday or over a weekend, this system should be reasonably fair.
Re:An idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking as someone who had a real jerk for a boss and was on call for 11 months at one stretch, I don't think that's a valid assumption. While it seems like there's no problem unless you're called, being on call can be a stressful experience. It means you can't go out of town and you have to be aware that any activity you plan may be interrupted. For me, it meant I had a full spring, summer, and fall where I could not go on one single long (20 miles or longer, which put me out of quick "response" range) bike ride, which is something I love to do.
There's another problem with this overall idea, as well. If you move in an unpredictable rotation like this, then you never know if you're going to be on call for an upcoming weekend. It means you basically can't plan on going away for a weekend until Friday. If you have a lot of friends and an active life, that is unacceptable.
clearly forgetting a step or two (Score:1)
5) Profit!!!
back to lurking...
Perfect... no such thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Make it even easier say $x a day for pager coverage (more for weekends) plus pay for call ins. That makes it easier... I don't have a life, need more money, I volunteer more often/take extra shifts. I have a real life, don't want as much extra work... I don't volunteer as much. Shifts that aren't covered are simply rotated through (still getting the extra bucks)
Get more holidays! (Score:3, Insightful)
Person 1: Primary from midnight to noon, secondary from noon to midnight;
Person 2: Primary from noon to midnight, secondary from midnight to moon;
Rotate each week (week 2: person 3-4,
And for an odd N (in your case 7), you automatically shift morning/night in each iteration.
Seems easier that way too, you don't have to remember "are we thursday and it is really between 6am and 11h30am?".
Simple formula! (Score:2, Interesting)
The length of a week is used so everyone gets an equal amount of time. Everyone is on call 2/x number of weeks. Shifts can be swapped easily, just be careful that primary and secondary aren'
Re:Simple formula! (Score:1)
W1 P1/A2
WE1 P3/A4
W2 P5/A6
WE2 P7/A1
W3 P2/A3
WE3 P4/A5
W4 P6/A7
WE4 P1/A2
W5 P3/A4
WE5 P5/A6
W6 P7/A1
WE6 P2/A3
W7 P4/A5
WE7 P6/A7
Obviously for any more than 4 people this will work out. for less than that... you will end up being on call all the time anyway. And of course if you have 4 people, you will have to figure something out to alternate weeks and weekends.
Re:it doesn't matter!! (Score:1)
Because when the economy cycles back up, and there are more jobs than workers again (always happens, charlie)...I want my people to stay where they're at. =-)
The equation (Score:1)
manager intervenes in cases where a person is about to work the the second holiday in a row, in which case the person being screwed trades with the person before him in the rotation.
Apply appropriate further perturbations in cases where the holidays worked differential exceeds 2.
Incidentally, in case somebody's looking for a really good unix admin to cover a holiday or something...?
best "rotation" (Score:3, Funny)
Randomly rotate every 44 hours (Score:3, Funny)
I like to use Buzz word bingo to select the next victim. Today "Beowulf cluster" is an instant critical hit.
Or try These [google.com]
Not really a rotation, but.... (Score:3, Interesting)
The way we do it... (Score:4, Insightful)
0 - Get a big ass calendar with holidays and some pencils. Decide how many days/year each person will have to work. Break them down into 4 or so categories: weekday, friday, weekend, holiday are ours. Friday is annoying because you can't go out but not as bad as an 24h (weekend/holiday) day. If weekends are light, you could just have "weekday" and "friday + weekend" categories. Anyway, share around evenly.
1 - Holiday parity is a good place to start. Noone wants to get screwed both xmas and new year's. Ask for preferences and nail down someone for coverage for these and Labor day, the 4th, T-day, etc. They can trade later.
2 - Map out the conferences and people's known vacation blocks, anniversaries, exams, etc.
3 - Some people haven't adapted to a totally random fill pattern of coverage, so give people a choice of contiguous blocks/easy to remember patterns (M/W for the month of ___) or irregular blips.
4 - Schedule the parts where many are out of the office with whatever it takes. Subtract these and the holiday days from the totals each person has to work. Schedule the pattern-desiring people and people with evening classes/outside commitments/inability to show up if on a random schedule. Again revise the totals.
5 - Start marching through at the beginning, rotating through the N people available. Keep running track of the fridays/weekends, do a little stagger to keep the weekends from being the same person on the same day, and it will start filling out.
6 - Think outside of the month to fit those last days in. You don't have to fill months contiguously or in date order. If there is a new employee, it may be best to slack off a bit on them (no weekends) at first until they fill out their KB; this gives you some flex.
N - Nothing you can do will make the perfect schedule. You have to have one master list that is the last word, and on which everyone must record their trades. Leftover days are best distributed to the people who took the least holiday days or the dues-paying new hires.
N+1 - Write some open source software to do this. Acrimony might be less, and the legibility would be better for sure.
Just an idea (Score:2)
Re:Dude, how hard is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was in IT (thank the gods I don't do that anymore) we simply rotated between the four of us. One week on, 3 weeks off. Backup was our manager, and his backup was the director. Very rarely did the manager need to get called, and it was even more rare for the director to get called.
If there were scheduling conflicts where one of us would be outside the 2-hour window (2 hours from getting the call to actually starting to work on it) then it was upto the individual on call to find
Re:Dude, how hard is it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Otherwise you're just overcomplicating it. Let people sort out their holidays by doing trades among themselves as long as they let you know.
But don't make it some complex mathematical scoring or other situation. You're just asking for accusations of unfairness if you do that. Somebody isn't going to "get" your carefully-thought-out system and feel it's working against them.
This problem has already been solved. (Score:4, Funny)
For example, let's say you have N people working (and all are interchaingable, to start with). That means that each of them should be on call for K = 1000/N milliseconds out of every second (on average). Provided there are less than 500 people to be scheduled, you can accomplish this by rounding K to an integer (for the case where there are more that 500 people to be scheduled, either schedule them for one millisecond each, or go to a finer grained time-base). One important point to remember is that you must resource lock the call to the person in << K ms to avoid race conditions (which can garble text messages and result in an annoying high-pitched noise if two or more people try to return the call simultainiously and get multiplexed--
Hot damn, my run just finished.
G'night all...
-- MarkusQ
Auction it... (Score:1, Interesting)
My team lead (Score:1)
Try a DA Form-6 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Try a DA Form-6 (Score:2)
And killed it!
DA Form-6 does NOT answer the question (Score:2)
DA Form 6 form does not answer his question on HOW to allocate the schedule. It is just a pre-printed sheet to write down a schedule once it has been established.
Leave it to the government to turn what is essentially a sheet of lined paper in to a formal, named and itemized military-spec piece of equipment.
How much you think a pad of those costs?
DA Form 6 is Exactly the answer (Score:1)
Correct, but not very helpful.....
How much you think a pad of those costs?
Nothing. ALL Army forms are available in PDF format. The advantage of a piece of paper is that you don't need a computer to operate it. This comes in handy in places like foxholes, which typically lack electricity.
FWIW, AR 220-45 tells you HOW to use the form. This took me, oh, 10 seconds to locate via google. FWIW, here's [army.mil] a PDF copy of the reg. Of
Re:DA Form 6 is Exactly the answer (Score:1)
That was my thought exactly when I read his comment. That, and the thought that he is a loser.
What unit are you in?
Re:DA Form-6 does NOT answer the question (Score:1)
DA Form 6 form does not answer his question on HOW to allocate the schedule.
Yes it does. The HOW is the accompanying regulation. See redleg's post below.
It is just a pre-printed sheet to write down a schedule once it has been established.
no it's not. The regulation - the HOW - is part of it.
Leave it to the government to turn what is essentially a sheet of lined paper in to a formal, named and itemized military-spec piece of equipment.
It's clear to me that you have no clue what you're talking
What's with all these complex calculations?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
It means you go on call 1 week in 5.
Simple to understand, simple to implement and no hassles. People swap individual days with other SA if they have some pressing engagement which they need to attend.
Re:What's with all these complex calculations?!? (Score:2)
Why does the piecewise it difficult? This isn't pilot scheduling!
I just set up the same thing here. 7 people, you have it from Thursday to Thursday (people can then take Mon/Fri off!). I did add one thing though... If it rings two nights in a row, it goes to the next person.
Jason Pollock
Re:What's with all these complex calculations?!? (Score:1)
In our rota we sit down every three months or so and work out between the people who are on the rota who wants to do which week, which works ok as long as the people on the rota are reasonable, (out of the last 5 years I've covered Christmas and New Year 4 times but then I'm a geek who never goes out and I volunteered to cover then so that people who had children didn't need to be on).
We do allow the people on the rota to decide between themselves
Here's what my team does... (Score:2, Informative)
This scheme works out good. We all end up with an even amount of day pager duty in a month, and we each get 13 weeks of night pager duty per year. If a holiday falls on a weekday, the night pager pe
Graveyard shift? (Score:3, Insightful)
Errr, this might be too obvious, but have you asked if anyone wants to work the graveyard shift?
That would remove 90% of the problem.
I don't know about your situation, but most groups of geeks contain one or two that are night owls. Why not pay them a small premium to work nights? A lot cheaper than overtime.
.02
cLive ;-)
you could try (Score:1)
How many on-call at once? (Score:1)
At my last job, there was a primary contact, who would receive the initial call. If, within a given time period, there was no response, the secondary person would be called.
How about giving the pagers to two people each week - if you've got seven people, you could have time off between the time spent as primary and secondary, or just make everyone do two weeks of on-call (one as the primary contact, one as the se
Junta Style (Score:1)
You wanna make 7 techs to agree on a schedule?
Do it by "Military Junta". Get a Manager and 2 elected members of the team to decide on the of the proposals submitted by the team.
Then, blame failure on the Junta and praise those who abstained to vote.
Keep it simple (Score:2)
We just picked someone at random to be the "first" and then went through the list of people in the group alphabetically, copied/pasted 3 times (to get about a year's worth) and then overlaid it on a calendar. If someone has a week they know will be bad, they can swap with someone right away. Holiday
Fairness isn't the only issue... (Score:2)
1) How responsive do you need to be? Generally the shortest time period you can rely on is 15-30 minutes - if you need faster responses, you better keep people on-site 24-7. But there's a big difference between being "on-call" with a response time of 2 hours versus being "on-call" with a response tim