How On-Call Challenges Affect Teams & How to Overcome Them
In today’s fast-paced tech landscape, organizations face increasing pressure to maintain operational reliability 24/7. However, on-call challenges remain a significant hurdle for many companies. As incidents are inevitable in complex systems, having the right strategies in place to manage them can make all the difference. Automated incident responses can’t address every issue, which is why many engineering teams struggle with on-call duties. But there is hope. By taking a holistic approach to these challenges, companies can improve their on-call practices and streamline incident resolution.
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The Growing Need for Reliable On-Call Systems
As software becomes more integrated into our daily lives, expectations for reliability continue to rise. It is no longer acceptable for services to experience significant downtime, especially when customer satisfaction is at stake. However, incidents will always occur in complex systems, and no matter how advanced the automated tools, they cannot resolve every problem.
On-call engineers are tasked with managing incidents that may affect both internal tools and customer-facing services. While it is essential to address customer-impacting outages quickly, internal on-call responsibilities also require focus. The complexities of internal incidents, such as integration failures or deployment roadblocks, often go unnoticed. In fact, these issues can be even more detrimental than a customer-facing outage, as they prevent teams from fixing problems promptly.
Internal On-Call: A Critical but Overlooked Responsibility
Yvonne Lam, Staff Software Engineer at Kong, highlights the significance of internal on-call responsibilities. Unlike incidents directly affecting customers, internal incidents typically involve tool failures that impede engineers from deploying code or performing critical integrations. Without addressing these internal failures, external outages can become even more severe due to delayed fixes.
To effectively manage internal on-call incidents, it’s vital to treat engineers as internal customers. Build “user journeys” to evaluate the impact of these incidents on their work, including how failures affect their ability to deploy code. Investing in internal resources like runbooks and monitoring tools is critical to keeping your internal systems as reliable as your customer-facing services.
Customer Impact: The Hard-to-Measure Challenge
One of the most complex aspects of incident management is assessing the true customer impact of an outage. It’s not just about how many users are affected, but also how critical the service is to customer experience. Charles Cary, CEO of Shoreline, points out that while metrics like SLIs and SLOs can help judge the severity of incidents, there will always be instances where intuition, gained through experience, plays a crucial role in assessing impact.
Moreover, engineers often face situations where following the runbook to the letter may not be the best course of action. In these instances, experienced engineers must balance the risk of implementing a fix versus the potential consequences, such as data loss.
Building a universal understanding of how to measure and respond to customer impact is a challenge, but one that becomes easier through collaboration and experience. This is where a psychologically safe work environment becomes essential. When engineers feel confident in escalating issues without fear of judgment, they can effectively manage incidents, even when the severity is unclear.
The Importance of Escalation in Incident Management
Escalation is often perceived as a sign of weakness or failure, but the group of engineers discussed in the fireside chat agree that it should be viewed as an essential tool in resolving incidents efficiently. The key takeaway is that escalation is not about admitting defeat but ensuring the best possible solution is found.
Matt Davis emphasized that escalation can involve reaching out to someone just “one hop away” from you—someone with a fresh perspective or additional expertise. Incident management is not a solo endeavor, and leveraging the collective expertise of the team is essential for effective resolution. Furthermore, social dynamics play a role in this process; a trusted mentor or colleague may be the best person to call in, even if they aren’t the most technically skilled in a given area.
Lowering the Cost of Being Wrong
Another key challenge in on-call situations is the hesitation to escalate, driven by the fear of being wrong. Engineers may feel embarrassed to admit they’ve made a mistake or may worry that escalating will be seen as a failure. This fear can delay incident resolution and prevent learning from mistakes.
To mitigate this, fostering a blameless culture is essential. As Yvonne aptly put it, “You have to lower the cost of being wrong.” When engineers feel safe to escalate issues without the fear of judgment, it creates an environment that encourages problem-solving and learning from each incident.
Fostering Empathy Through Developer On-Call Challenges
To further reduce the stigma around escalation and foster a culture of collaboration, it is important to involve developers in on-call rotations. By experiencing on-call responsibilities firsthand, developers gain empathy for the operational challenges their teams face. This can lead to better development practices and a deeper understanding of the impact of their code on the overall system.
Developer on-call also highlights the importance of a holistic approach to incident management. By breaking down silos between development and operations, teams can become more cohesive and responsive during critical incidents. This level of collaboration ensures that no one feels isolated when managing incidents.
Conclusion: Overcoming On-Call Challenges with the Right Strategy
On-call challenges are an inevitable part of operating in complex systems, but they don’t have to be insurmountable. By taking a comprehensive approach to incident management, involving internal stakeholders, fostering a culture of learning, and promoting collaboration, organizations can significantly improve their on-call practices.
At ZippyOPS, we specialize in helping organizations build better operational systems, with a focus on DevOps, Microservices, Cloud, AIOps, and more. Our consulting services and solutions are designed to support teams through complex challenges, ensuring a smoother on-call experience.
If you’re looking to enhance your incident management strategies, contact us today at sales@zippyops.com.
