On-Call Handoff Patterns
Effective patterns for on-call shift transitions, ensuring continuity, context transfer, and reliable incident response across shifts.
Do not use this skill when
- •The task is unrelated to on-call handoff patterns
- •You need a different domain or tool outside this scope
Instructions
- •Clarify goals, constraints, and required inputs.
- •Apply relevant best practices and validate outcomes.
- •Provide actionable steps and verification.
- •If detailed examples are required, open
resources/implementation-playbook.md.
Use this skill when
- •Transitioning on-call responsibilities
- •Writing shift handoff summaries
- •Documenting ongoing investigations
- •Establishing on-call rotation procedures
- •Improving handoff quality
- •Onboarding new on-call engineers
Core Concepts
1. Handoff Components
| Component | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Active Incidents | What's currently broken |
| Ongoing Investigations | Issues being debugged |
| Recent Changes | Deployments, configs |
| Known Issues | Workarounds in place |
| Upcoming Events | Maintenance, releases |
2. Handoff Timing
code
Recommended: 30 min overlap between shifts Outgoing: ├── 15 min: Write handoff document └── 15 min: Sync call with incoming Incoming: ├── 15 min: Review handoff document ├── 15 min: Sync call with outgoing └── 5 min: Verify alerting setup
Templates
Template 1: Shift Handoff Document
markdown
# On-Call Handoff: Platform Team **Outgoing**: @alice (2024-01-15 to 2024-01-22) **Incoming**: @bob (2024-01-22 to 2024-01-29) **Handoff Time**: 2024-01-22 09:00 UTC --- ## 🔴 Active Incidents ### None currently active No active incidents at handoff time. --- ## 🟡 Ongoing Investigations ### 1. Intermittent API Timeouts (ENG-1234) **Status**: Investigating **Started**: 2024-01-20 **Impact**: ~0.1% of requests timing out **Context**: - Timeouts correlate with database backup window (02:00-03:00 UTC) - Suspect backup process causing lock contention - Added extra logging in PR #567 (deployed 01/21) **Next Steps**: - [ ] Review new logs after tonight's backup - [ ] Consider moving backup window if confirmed **Resources**: - Dashboard: [API Latency](https://grafana/d/api-latency) - Thread: #platform-eng (01/20, 14:32) --- ### 2. Memory Growth in Auth Service (ENG-1235) **Status**: Monitoring **Started**: 2024-01-18 **Impact**: None yet (proactive) **Context**: - Memory usage growing ~5% per day - No memory leak found in profiling - Suspect connection pool not releasing properly **Next Steps**: - [ ] Review heap dump from 01/21 - [ ] Consider restart if usage > 80% **Resources**: - Dashboard: [Auth Service Memory](https://grafana/d/auth-memory) - Analysis doc: [Memory Investigation](https://docs/eng-1235) --- ## 🟢 Resolved This Shift ### Payment Service Outage (2024-01-19) - **Duration**: 23 minutes - **Root Cause**: Database connection exhaustion - **Resolution**: Rolled back v2.3.4, increased pool size - **Postmortem**: [POSTMORTEM-89](https://docs/postmortem-89) - **Follow-up tickets**: ENG-1230, ENG-1231 --- ## 📋 Recent Changes ### Deployments | Service | Version | Time | Notes | |---------|---------|------|-------| | api-gateway | v3.2.1 | 01/21 14:00 | Bug fix for header parsing | | user-service | v2.8.0 | 01/20 10:00 | New profile features | | auth-service | v4.1.2 | 01/19 16:00 | Security patch | ### Configuration Changes - 01/21: Increased API rate limit from 1000 to 1500 RPS - 01/20: Updated database connection pool max from 50 to 75 ### Infrastructure - 01/20: Added 2 nodes to Kubernetes cluster - 01/19: Upgraded Redis from 6.2 to 7.0 --- ## ⚠️ Known Issues & Workarounds ### 1. Slow Dashboard Loading **Issue**: Grafana dashboards slow on Monday mornings **Workaround**: Wait 5 min after 08:00 UTC for cache warm-up **Ticket**: OPS-456 (P3) ### 2. Flaky Integration Test **Issue**: `test_payment_flow` fails intermittently in CI **Workaround**: Re-run failed job (usually passes on retry) **Ticket**: ENG-1200 (P2) --- ## 📅 Upcoming Events | Date | Event | Impact | Contact | |------|-------|--------|---------| | 01/23 02:00 | Database maintenance | 5 min read-only | @dba-team | | 01/24 14:00 | Major release v5.0 | Monitor closely | @release-team | | 01/25 | Marketing campaign | 2x traffic expected | @platform | --- ## 📞 Escalation Reminders | Issue Type | First Escalation | Second Escalation | |------------|------------------|-------------------| | Payment issues | @payments-oncall | @payments-manager | | Auth issues | @auth-oncall | @security-team | | Database issues | @dba-team | @infra-manager | | Unknown/severe | @engineering-manager | @vp-engineering | --- ## 🔧 Quick Reference ### Common Commands ```bash # Check service health kubectl get pods -A | grep -v Running # Recent deployments kubectl get events --sort-by='.lastTimestamp' | tail -20 # Database connections psql -c "SELECT count(*) FROM pg_stat_activity;" #