Trial: Split Support Response Crew to half days twice a week

Problem Statement

  • What is the problem?

Doing Support Response Crew (SRC) for one full day can be very stressful and makes it difficult to manage Assigned tickets.

  • Why is this a problem?

This forces a decision between:

  • marking assigned tickets as On-hold and picking them backup on the day after Crew day
  • doing Crew tasks until 5p and then working late to catch up on assigned tickets

Neither of these options is particularly appealing.

Proposal

For some people who feel stuck making this decision, it may be preferable to act in the Support Response Crew role in two four hour shifts on different days instead of a single daylong shift. One of the big benefits of this approach is that people who find this approach useful can take advantage of it without adversely impacting their crewmates. (Each Crew has the same number of people.)

For this issue, @jayo and I propose swapping half days during the week starting 8 February 2021. This idea was sparked during the 02 February skip level.

TODOs

  • Decide what to swap
  • Add to Support Week in Review
  • Tell Monday crew on Monday (@ mention in #support_response-crew)
  • Tell Wednesday crew (@ mention in #support_response-crew)
  • Update Support Response Crew spreadsheet
  • Debrief
    • How did it go? Rather well.
      • We both prefer this approach.
    • What do we do next?
      • Discuss in upcoming skip level
      • Try again during weeks of 22 February, 1 March and 8 March. (This will bring us to 4 weeks of data.) in progress

What to swap

Week 1

  • DONE Week starting 8 February:
    • Monday AM: Brie (9a-1p Eastern)
    • Monday PM: Jason (1p-5p Eastern)
    • Wednesday AM: Jason (9a-1p Eastern)
    • Wednesday PM: Brie (1p-5p Eastern)

It went well. Let's keep going.

Week 2

  • DONE Week starting 22 February:
    • Update spreadsheet with schedule below.
    • Monday AM: Brie (9a-1p Eastern/1400-1800 UTC)
    • Monday PM: Jason (1p-5p Eastern 1800-2200 UTC)
    • Wednesday AM: Jason (9a-1p Eastern 1400-1800 UTC)
    • Wednesday PM: Brie (1p-5p Eastern 1800-2200 UTC)

Week 3

  • DONE Week starting 01 March:
    • Update spreadsheet/Slack with schedule below.
    • Wednesday AM: Jason (9a-1p Eastern)
    • Wednesday PM: Brie (1p-5p Eastern)
    • Friday AM: Brie (9a-1p Eastern)
    • Friday PM: Jason (1p-5p Eastern)

Week 4

  • DONE Week starting 08 March:
    • Update Slack/spreadsheet with schedule below. thread
    • Monday AM: Jason (9a-1p Eastern)
    • Monday PM: Brie (1p-5p Eastern)
    • Wednesday AM: Brie (9a-1p Eastern)
    • Wednesday PM: Jason (1p-5p Eastern)

DRI

Brie Carranza will act as the DRI for this issue.

Required Resources

Potential Roadblocks/Things to consider

With the current scope, I don't see much in the way of roadblocks. Communication will be an important element of this. We should endeavor to make it crystal clear who is doing what when so that the Monday and Wednesday crews know what to expect. The relatively asynchronous nature of Support Response Crew helps here.

Considerations for later rounds of the trial

  • Consider the East Coast/West Coast-ness of the engineers who are swapping. (Jason and Brie are both Eastern time zone; what happens when people in different time zones want to swap?)
  • People may wish to do 2x half days of Crew on some weeks but not on others.
  • The Support Response Crew spreadsheet does not currently support any granularity beyond one day.

Desired Outcome

  • What does success look like?

    • Participants have less stress
    • Participants are able to address assigned tickets and perform SRC duties reasonably on the same day
    • Crewmates do not notice any adverse side effects

  • How do we measure success?

    • A survey: if participants find the 2x half days approach helpful, it's successful! If they don't, it's not.
    • Fewer tickets set to On-hold during the assignee's crew day

  • Where would future feedback go?

    • In the comments section of this issue.

Related Issues/MRs/Epics/Tickets

How did it go?

Notes from the thread

A thread.

What, if anything, do we do to account for the US Federal instance?

@bcarranza: See #2988 (closed) about US Fed -- In the Support Response Crew or out of the crew?. See James Lopes' updates from three weeks ago w/ a proposal. On Wednesdays, Caleb Cooper and I are in the Support Response Crew and we are both marked "US Federal". It looks like Wednesdays and Thursdays regularly have 2x Support Engineers with the "US Federal" designation. Lastly, I'll take this opportunity to mention the now-closed Federal Support Staff Audit and call for Participation.

Debrief after Week 1

  • Performing Support Response Crew duties in this way makes it much easier to maintain the energy required to be effective during the entire 8 hours per week.
  • We have participated in Support Response Crew on the same day of the week for the entire time. Jason and I have each grown accustomed to the impact that our given days of the week have on the cadence of the rest of the week. (There's talk about changing days around but that's been deferred to reduce scheduling complexity.)
  • Escalating to SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) on a tight timeframe is difficult. This leads to a poor customer and engineer experience. (The trial does not aim to impact this; this is just an observation we had during the debrief.)
  • We need to talk about making Crew work easier/less stressful in general. Some measure of success other than weekly stats would be helpful.

Jason and Brie agree: this was a quality of life improvement. So far, we both prefer to do Support Response Crew this way.

Debrief after Week 4

We are chatting Friday, March 12.

  • How was it?
  • What did we learn?
  • What are the next steps?
Edited by Brie Carranza