On-Call Best Practices for Engineering Teams: A Complete Guide
On-call rotations are a critical part of running reliable software systems. But poorly managed on-call can lead to burnout, high turnover, and degraded incident response. This comprehensive guide covers proven best practices for building sustainable on-call programs that keep your systems reliable without sacrificing your team's wellbeing.
What Makes On-Call Challenging?
Before diving into solutions, let's acknowledge the real challenges engineering teams face with on-call:
- Unpredictable interruptions to personal time
- Mental load of being "always available"
- Uneven distribution of incidents across team members
- Lack of context when responding to unfamiliar systems
- Burnout from chronic sleep disruption
The good news? Every one of these challenges can be mitigated with the right practices and tools.
Building a Sustainable On-Call Program
1. Right-Size Your Rotation
The foundation of sustainable on-call is having enough people in the rotation. Here's a simple rule of thumb:
Minimum viable rotation: 4-5 engineers
With fewer than 4 people, each engineer is on-call 25%+ of the time, which isn't sustainable long-term. If you have a small team, consider:
- Longer rotation periods (weekly instead of daily)
- Shared rotations across related teams
- On-call compensation or time-off policies
Optimal rotation size: 6-8 engineers
This provides a good balance between:
- Reasonable on-call frequency (once every 6-8 weeks)
- Keeping everyone familiar with the systems
- Having enough coverage for vacations and emergencies
2. Define Clear On-Call Responsibilities
Ambiguity kills effective incident response. Document exactly what's expected during an on-call shift:
What on-call IS:
- Responding to pages within [X] minutes
- Triaging and acknowledging alerts
- Performing initial diagnosis
- Escalating when necessary
- Documenting incidents for post-mortems
What on-call IS NOT:
- Fixing every problem alone
- Working on regular development tasks while on-call
- Being available 24/7 without backup
3. Establish Response Time Expectations
Set realistic SLAs for different severity levels:
| Severity | Definition | Response Time | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1/Critical | Service down, customers impacted | 5-15 minutes | Complete outage |
| P2/High | Degraded service, some customers affected | 30 minutes | Partial functionality loss |
| P3/Medium | Issue affecting internal operations | 2 hours | Non-critical service issue |
| P4/Low | Minor issue, no immediate impact | Next business day | Performance degradation |
Make sure your monitoring and alerting systems are configured to respect these levels—not everything should page at 3 AM.
Reducing On-Call Burnout
Burnout is the biggest threat to sustainable on-call programs. Here's how to prevent it:
Implement "Follow the Sun" (If Possible)
If your team spans time zones, rotate on-call so each person is only responsible during their local business hours or early evening. A distributed team in San Francisco, London, and Singapore can provide 24/7 coverage without anyone regularly working overnight.
Provide Meaningful Compensation
On-call is real work and should be compensated accordingly:
- Extra pay for on-call hours
- Comp time for nights/weekends spent responding
- Reduced workload during on-call weeks
- Recognition in performance reviews
Teams that don't compensate on-call often see resentment build and top performers leaving for companies with better policies.
Reduce Alert Noise Aggressively
Nothing burns out engineers faster than alert fatigue. Regularly audit your alerting:
- Delete alerts that have never led to action
- Increase thresholds for flapping alerts
- Correlate alerts to reduce duplicate pages
- Automate responses for predictable issues
A good target: less than 1 actionable alert per on-call shift. If you're getting more, your monitoring needs work.
Make On-Call Handoffs Meaningful
The transition between on-call shifts is a high-risk moment. Establish a handoff ritual:
- Written summary of ongoing issues
- Quick sync meeting (15 minutes max)
- Knowledge transfer of any system changes
- Explicit confirmation that handoff is complete
Using a tool like OnCallManager makes handoffs seamless with automatic notifications and context sharing directly in Slack.
Effective Incident Response Practices
Create Runbooks for Common Issues
When the pager goes off at 2 AM, you don't want to be troubleshooting from scratch. Create runbooks that cover:
- Symptoms - What does this alert mean?
- Impact - Who/what is affected?
- Diagnosis steps - How to identify the root cause
- Mitigation steps - How to restore service quickly
- Escalation path - Who to contact if you can't resolve it
Store runbooks where they're easily accessible—linked from alerts, pinned in Slack channels, or integrated into your on-call tool.
Embrace the "Incident Commander" Role
For significant incidents, designate an Incident Commander who:
- Coordinates the response effort
- Communicates with stakeholders
- Makes decisions about escalation
- Documents the timeline
- Ensures someone is tracking follow-up items
This prevents the chaos of multiple people trying to fix things simultaneously without coordination.
Conduct Blameless Post-Mortems
After every significant incident, hold a post-mortem focused on:
- What happened (timeline)
- Why it happened (root cause analysis)
- How to prevent it (action items)
- What we learned (knowledge sharing)
Critically, post-mortems must be blameless. Focus on systems and processes, not individuals. People who fear blame will hide problems rather than fix them.
On-Call Rotation Scheduling Best Practices
Use Weekly Rotations (Usually)
Daily rotations create too much context-switching. Monthly rotations lead to rusty skills. Weekly rotations typically work best because:
- Enough time to build context
- Short enough to not be overwhelming
- Natural alignment with work weeks
- Easy to plan personal time around
Start Shifts at Reasonable Hours
Don't start your rotation at midnight. Common patterns:
- Monday morning start (9 AM local time)
- Wednesday afternoon start (avoids Monday rush)
- Friday morning start (overlap with deployers)
The key is consistency—everyone should know exactly when they're on-call without checking calendars.
Plan for Coverage Gaps
Life happens. Build systems to handle:
- Vacations - Block out time in advance
- Sick days - Clear escalation to backup
- Conflicts - Easy shift swap mechanisms
- Emergencies - Pre-assigned secondary on-call
With OnCallManager, you can manage overrides and swaps directly in Slack, making it easy for team members to coordinate coverage.
Tools and Infrastructure
Essential On-Call Tools
A complete on-call setup needs:
- Monitoring & Alerting - Prometheus, Datadog, PagerDuty, etc.
- Rotation Management - OnCallManager, native scheduling tools
- Communication - Slack, Microsoft Teams
- Documentation - Confluence, Notion, wiki
Why Slack-Native Tools Matter
If your team lives in Slack, your on-call tools should too. Benefits of Slack-native on-call management:
- No context switching during incidents
- Visible to the whole team (transparency)
- Easy to check who's on-call (just look in Slack)
- Integrated notifications (no separate app)
This is exactly why we built OnCallManager—to bring rotation management directly into the tool teams already use.
Measuring On-Call Health
Track these metrics to ensure your on-call program stays healthy:
Alert Metrics
- Alerts per shift - Target: <5 actionable alerts
- Alert noise ratio - Target: >80% actionable
- Time to acknowledge - Target: <5 minutes for P1
Team Health Metrics
- On-call satisfaction (quarterly survey)
- Voluntary on-call participation rate
- Burnout indicators (sick days after on-call, turnover)
Incident Metrics
- Mean Time to Acknowledge (MTTA)
- Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR)
- Incident recurrence rate
Review these monthly and adjust your practices accordingly.
Common On-Call Anti-Patterns to Avoid
The "Hero" Culture
Don't celebrate engineers who stay up all night fixing incidents alone. This creates unsustainable expectations and discourages proper escalation.
Punitive On-Call Assignment
Never use on-call as punishment for writing buggy code. This creates a toxic environment and doesn't actually improve code quality.
Indefinite On-Call
Every on-call shift should have a clear end time. "You're on-call until we hire someone" is a fast track to burnout and resignation.
No Backup Plan
The primary on-call person should always have a backup they can escalate to. Expecting one person to handle everything alone is a recipe for disaster.
Getting Started: Your On-Call Improvement Checklist
Ready to improve your on-call program? Here's where to start:
- [ ] Document current on-call responsibilities and expectations
- [ ] Audit alert volume and reduce noise by 50%
- [ ] Implement structured handoffs between shifts
- [ ] Create runbooks for your top 5 most common incidents
- [ ] Set up a regular on-call retrospective (monthly)
- [ ] Implement a fair compensation policy
- [ ] Use a tool like OnCallManager to streamline rotation management
Conclusion
Effective on-call isn't about working harder—it's about working smarter. By implementing these best practices, you can build an on-call program that:
- Keeps your systems reliable
- Doesn't burn out your team
- Improves over time through learning
- Attracts rather than repels engineering talent
Remember: on-call is a team sport. The goal is shared responsibility, not individual heroics. With the right practices, tools, and culture, on-call can become a manageable part of engineering life rather than a dreaded burden.
Ready to simplify your on-call rotations? Add OnCallManager to Slack and start managing rotations where your team already works.
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