NOC schedule

Description

There are many different ways of scheduling the work in a NOC. There can be many reasons why an organisation has a specific schedule, e.g. how many people work in the NOC or if there are specific laws governing work hours in that country.
The goal of this page is to share different schedules.

What is interesting to know about schedules

Please list below what you think is interesting information to include when sharing your schedules.
That way we will get a better idea what information is useful to include when sharing.

• A description explaining how the schedule "works"
• How many people work in the NOC that use this schedule
• Are there any special reasons why your organisation used this schedule
• Are there any special laws in your country governing
• Is there anything special that is good or bad with this schedule

Examples

Feel free to add your own examples on this page.
Or send them to the TF-NOC mailing list and someone will upload them here for you.

Example 1

Shift for 6 people
Active coverage from 07:00 to 19:00, oncall the rest of the hours of the day

Number of shifts in schedule and times each shift work

Weekly rotation

Schedule explanation
The matrix above is one snapshot of how the six NOC employees work during the first week of the shift rotation. E.g. person 1 work shift one the first week, at the same time person 2 works shift two from Monday to Thursday and start working shift 3 on Friday. The second week of the shift rotation person 1 will work shift 2 from Monday to Thursday and start working shift 3 on Friday and person 2 will work shift 3 from Monday to Thursday. In other words each week the persons in the matrix are moved down one row and parson 6 is moved to the top of the matrix.
The reason person 3 is not working on Friday in the first week of the shift rotation has to do with Swedish working laws.
In theory the above shift could work with only 3 people.
"-" = person not working that day
Color red means that person is oncall, alarms and phonecalls will be directed to that person. Oncall starts when the last shift ends and is "active" until the first shift start working again. During weekends there is only oncall.

Benefits
This schedule only require 3 people to function, which leaves other NOC employees to go on training or work on project or other kinds of development.
Disadvantages
There is only active coverage between 07:00 to 19:00

Example 2

Shift for 6 people
Active coverage from 06:00 to 22:00, oncall the rest of the hours of the day

Number of shifts in schedule and times each shift work

Weekly rotation

For an explanation of the schedule see example 1.

Benefits
As there are many different shifts there are also the possibility to have many handovers between people. Many handovers are not necessarily beneficial, however it opens up the possibility for people to work from different locations. E.g. if a person wants to work from home between 06:00-08:00 then handover to a person arriving at the office at 08:00.
Disadvantages
For this schedule to work there always have to be four out of six people working in shifts. If people are away on training or sick it can be hard to maintain the schedule.