Re: [NOOP] 24x7 NOC..

[Paul Ferguson <ferguson () cisco com>]

It should be noted that larger NOC operations understand
that their staff members will either:

 o Burn out and die.

 o Learn lots and get a real job with better pay.

Thus, many NOC supervisors generally rate the expected
lifetime for a NOC staff member at 13 months. Really.

Having said that, it would behoove a good NOC supervisor
to understand how to best use the resources at their disposal.
That means not burning people our prematurely.

Or better yet, burn them out. That means that once they get
some real experience under their belts, the rest of us
can hire them.  :-)

At least, that seems to be the case at the telco's.

- paul



At 06:46 PM 10/2/97 -0700, Aaron wrote:

> I've no experience in scheduling for a NOC, but have managed support
> organizations that operate 24/7.  My general conclussions are that not
> everything works for everyone AND you will get burnout regardless of the
> schedule.
>
> However some things I've learned about 24/7 schedules --
>
> 1.  People tend to be better able to deal with 10 hour shifts.  Some
> people can deal with 12 hours shifts but people get more surly and the
> burn out is higher.
>
> 2.  Some overlap is good.  You need a time to relay implicit knowledge
> (we all wish everything was written down, but reality dictates
> otherwise).  In fact a Wednesday overlap is probably really not that bad
> at all - It provides a great time for any kind of triage or department
> meetings that might need to occur.
>
>
>
> Jamie Rishaw wrote:
> >   We're in the process of developing a 24x7 NOC, and can agree upon about
> > everything except scheduling.
> >
> >   We have a few ideas, all of which have really bad downsides:
> >
> > - 4day, 10hour rotation. 2-hour overlap.
> >   - Downside is overlap, and the fact that nobody will have a regular
> >     schedule.. they'll be M-Th, then T-Fr, W-Sa, Th-Su, Fr-Mo.. bleh.
> >
> > - M-F 9-hour shifts, Sa-Su 2x12-hour shifts
> >   - Downside is the Sa-Su people are just "extras".
> >
> > - Su-We, We-Sa 10-hour shifts.
> >   Alleviates "skewing" schedules one day every week, but creates a 14.5%
> >   labor increase on Wednesday when you have a complete overlap.
> >
> > Anyhow,, we're looking for information on how other NOCs around the world
> > do it.  We're trying to give good coverage without killing/burning out the
> > NOC team members.
> >
> > TIA.
> >
> > Jamie Rishaw