365x24x7

Mon Apr 18 14:46:25 UTC 2011

In my previous life at a large backbone provider's managed security
services SOC/NOC we had the following:

Shifts where divided into front and back half with 10 hour days.   
Front and back half segments of the shift where also split with half
working Sun-Wed and half working Mon-Thur alternating.  That had them
alternating weekend coverage but also alternating 4 day and 2 day
'weekends'.    One shift lead did M-F 8 hour days and was primary
escalation for their reports during off hours/weekends, with the lead
having to fill any emergency schedule holes.

This provided shift overlap to cover issue hand offs and had everyone in
the office Tue-Thur to cover meetings, training, any large projects,
etc.    At min the shifts where 9 staff (4 front half, 4 back half, and
the team lead).    So 27 min staffing.    We normally had some
additional folks per shift and they would do M-F 8 hours like the lead
or fill a gap on weekends and flex the overages during the week during
the mid week overlap.

We did do the 30 day rotation of changing to the next shift (ie Morning
-> Days -> Midnight -> Morning) but once we got beyond staffing with 20
year old single guys it was basically impossible to keep someone very
long who was willing to do that  as it kills any outside activities like
taking classes, kids schedules, etc.)

-- 
---
James M Keller