Collaboration with VSHN Canada

With VIP-24 VSHN has decided to implement a follow-the-sun concept to cover 24/7 operations for our customer business, to reduce the burden of working outside normal working hours. Now that VSHN Canada is up and running, we want to ensure to make the most out of it. We are already doing night maintenance for all non-CH-only customers and taking over 1st level OnCall during Vancouver office hours. This has reduced the amount of required nighttime work in Switzerland significantly.

To benefit even more from VSHN Canada, there needs to be a process that defines how VSHNeers in Switzerland can hand over work to Canada. This can be work that has to be done during nighttime, like the rollout of changes or just regular work that is handed over because there is no capacity within the teams in Switzerland. This process should be as simple as possible. A few examples of work that could be suitable for handing over to Canada:

  • Increasing PV size of xyz on cluster xyz (Ops)

  • Improve the Rocket deployment to get it HA (AppOps)

  • Refactor Terraform to meet requirements xyz (Engineering)

  • Find solution to automate xyz for customer xyz (Solution Design)

We suggest the following procedure to hand over a ticket:

  • Add Label "Canada" to the ticket

  • Remove assignee from ticket

  • The OnCall engineer in Vancouver will check for new issues with that label every morning and make sure they get taken care of

For this to work a couple of rules must be followed:

  • Make sure the ticket is properly refined

  • Task deliverables must be clear

  • Due date must be set

  • The due date must be at least two days in the future, so the VSHNeer in Canada can ask questions if necessary. If the ticket needs to be handled sooner, contact a VSHNeer in Canada directly to make sure the task is clear and there is capacity in Canada

  • All teams can hand over tickets to Canada even if there is no VSHNeer from your team there