Scenario
You run an SRE, support, or security team covering three regions. Incidents spike at awkward hours, and on-call rotations rely on clean baton passes. Your goals: predictable handoffs, clear overlap, and fewer “who owns this” pings. TimeyKit tools keep everyone aligned with the same clock.
Step 1 — Map the roster
Collect each engineer’s home city and preferred working window. Drop them into the Timezone planner with realistic working hours (08:00–16:00 or similar). Save the share link labeled “Ops Handoff Base.” This becomes your source of truth for overlap. Highlight the blocks where two regions overlap for at least one hour; those are your default handoff slots.
Step 2 — Track DST waves
Open the DST Planner and mark when each city jumps. Paste the screenshot into your runbook so everyone knows the risk windows. Example: Seattle ↔ Dublin ↔ Singapore. March brings U.S. DST, late March brings Europe, and Singapore never moves. Without the planner, you will miss the two-week span where Dublin sits halfway between.
Step 3 — Build the wallboard
Launch the World Clock tool on a spare monitor in your operations room. Add UTC plus each duty location. Enable fullscreen mode, hide controls, and bookmark the URL. This keeps the entire crew aware of who is awake in real time. Add color accents for the currently active region if you want an at-a-glance cue.
Step 4 — Document the baton pass
- Define the message format (e.g., Ops Slack channel post with summary + outstanding tasks).
- List the required attachments (incident dashboard link, on-call contact, status page copy).
- Include the Timezone link so new responders can confirm future windows instantly.
Example handoff snippet: “Dublin → Denver handoff at 17:30 Dublin / 10:30 Denver. EU handoff doc and ticket queue ready. Next overlap check on March 10 when DST kicks in.”
Step 5 — Rehearse incidents
Run quarterly drills where each region acts like an incident lands five minutes before their end of day. Use the Timezone view to confirm the next region is online before closing laptops. Add the Timezone link to your paging templates so whoever acknowledges can immediately sanity-check the schedule.
FAQ
- How often should we tweak the schedule?
- Review before each DST season and whenever someone relocates or changes shifts.
- Can we automate the handoff reminder?
- Yes. Use your chat bot or scheduler to post the Timezone overlap summary along with the on-call rotation so the reminder includes local times automatically.
- What if a region is offline?
- Keep a backup city row ready in the World Clock tool. If Singapore loses power, swap in Bangalore and share the updated link.