When it breaks
When something breaks
Incidents that span a handover, what the person waking up actually needs, and the things that genuinely cannot wait.
three things · three nights · one that no number of nights settles
Four shapes, and the last is a decision about people rather than about systems.
When It Breaks an Hour Before the Handover
An incident opening near the end of a working day is the most expensive event on a team with no shared hour, and the cost is set in the last twenty minutes.
What to Write Before You Sleep
An incident note written at the end of a long day has four parts, and the one everybody omits is the list of things already ruled out.
Who May Be Woken, and Who Decides That
Waking somebody is a decision about a person's sleep. It belongs to the people affected, made in daylight, not to whoever is alarmed at two in the morning.
What Genuinely Cannot Wait Until Morning
The test for overnight urgency is not how bad something is but whether the damage is still growing while nobody does anything.
The Decision Only the Sleeping Half Can Make
Half the overnight delay on a broken thing is not diagnosis. It is waiting for permission from somebody asleep, and most of that is fixable in advance.
Handing Over an Incident That Is Still Running
The one place where a few minutes of live contact is worth its price is passing an incident that is still open, and it only works alongside something written.
Reconstructing What Happened Overnight
Working out what happened during a night you slept through is its own task, and the record that makes it possible has to be made during the night, not after.
On-Call When the Team Spans a Gap
A wide gap is the one part of this arrangement that makes something easier: most of the clock is already covered by people working ordinary days.