In Search of the "Perfect" Pager Rotation?

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."

Comments

Try a DA Form-6

[oni]

The Army had to solve this problem eons ago in order to have rotating guard and staff duty schedules. Thier solution is the DA Form-6. Look it up. It has all the features you specified.

Here's what my team does...

[jermz]

I work in a team of 4 admins, and we have two types of pager duty, day and night. The day pager is from 8AM to 5PM. The night pager covers 5PM to 8AM and all day Sat and Sun. We rotate day pager on a daily basis, and night pager on a weekly basis. You cannot have day pager on the same week you have night pager.

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 person does the day shift.

A friend of mine on another team does an entire week of pager at a time. It sucks for him. He hates it. I much prefer our system.

Re:7 people, 7 days in a week . . .

[CharlieG]

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 week!

Guess what? It expands too! Just have an ordered list of employees, and the next person gets the beeper when you get to work, and it just wraps around. In fact, it works better when you have more folks, because you get longer blocks of "Off call"

When folks want a vacation, they have to work out a trade, and this is the sore point, because it can be hard to find someone to take your spot