On-call onboarding checklist
Make the first on-call week calm, not chaotic.
This checklist is built for engineering managers who want consistency. It turns the first rotation into a repeatable, low-stress experience.
Checklist
The four phases that prevent panicked pages.
Owners + verification steps keep this practical.
Week 0 prep
- Grant access to dashboards, logs, runbooks, and incident tooling.
- Confirm escalation paths and backup contacts.
- Review the “first 15 minutes” runbook for top services.
- Walk through alert severity and paging expectations.
Shadow rotation
- Shadow at least one real page or simulated alert.
- Practice triage: impact check, mitigation, verification.
- Review a recent postmortem and the follow-through actions.
- Confirm who approves risky mitigations (flags, rollbacks).
First live week
- Daily check-ins with the primary mentor (10 minutes).
- Use the standard incident update template.
- Log every “unknown” and add to the gotcha list.
- Debrief each page within 24 hours.
Post-rotation follow-through
- Capture missing runbook steps and add owners.
- Review alert noise and tune at least one rule.
- Close the loop on follow-up tasks (SLO, runbook, testing).
- Update the onboarding checklist with new learnings.
Template
Copy/paste checklist template
Drop this into your runbook repo or onboarding doc.
On-call onboarding checklist
Owner:
Date:
Services in scope:
Week 0 prep
- Access: dashboards, logs, runbooks, incident tooling
- Escalation map confirmed (primary + backup)
- First 15 minutes runbook reviewed
- Alert severity/paging expectations reviewed
Shadow rotation
- Shadowed a real page or simulated alert
- Practiced triage + mitigation + verification
- Reviewed a recent postmortem and follow-ups
- Approval path for risky mitigations confirmed
First live week
- Daily mentor check-ins
- Used standard incident update template
- Logged unknowns + gotchas
- Debriefed each page within 24 hours
Post-rotation follow-through
- Runbook updates + owners assigned
- At least one alert rule tuned
- Follow-ups tracked to completion
- Checklist updated with new learnings
Related pillars
Pair onboarding with the runbooks that back it up.
Trusted onboarding depends on owned runbooks and clear ownership.
Founders’ Access Request‑only
Turn on‑call knowledge into something your team can trust.
We map the workflows that create the most interrupts, then ship owned answers with source links and “first checks.” You get a plan you can run while shipping.
Owned answers
Every answer has an owner, source links, and first checks so engineers can verify fast.
Onboarding that scales
New hires self‑serve with the same answers your staff engineers trust.
Less escalation noise
Repeat pings drop because the “right answer” is owned and easy to find.
Get started
Request early access
1Quick intake: role, team size, last on‑call failure.
2We map one workflow and the interrupt baseline.
3You get a 30‑day pilot plan and clear outcomes.
No sales deck. We take a small cohort and onboard personally.