New Ops Guide: Best Practices for On-Call Teams

In today's digital era, the demand for continuous availability of services has led to the necessity for technical teams to implement on-call management systems, which can be challenging for those new to the concept. This guide from PagerDuty provides insights into establishing an effective on-call program, particularly for teams transitioning from relying on network operations centers or separate operations teams. It emphasizes the importance of minimizing alert handoffs to reduce incident resolution times and encourages application developers to actively participate in on-call duties to expedite issue resolution and permanent fixes. Addressing the common perception that on-call duties are disruptive, the guide suggests improving the on-call experience through better technical and cultural practices, such as automating responses to frequent issues and allowing flexible shift swaps. PagerDuty offers tools like On-Call Readiness Reports to help teams prepare and configure their notification methods according to service priorities. The guide also invites feedback from users to enhance the on-call checklist, supporting a community-driven approach to refining on-call management practices.