Rotating shifts between daytime and nighttime is a horrible thing to
do to your workers, both for their health and their attention span.
I wonder how well something like the following would work (seen in
paid fire/EMS circles):
24 on, 48 off.
But staff those 24 shifts with maybe 20% more than actually needed to
provide minimum coverage.
Of course, that all assumes that you can trust your guys to work out
the dynamics of "hey, you watch for the next 30 while I take a break".
-c
Note that for much of those 24 on, the people are actually on downtime on site
in case the buzzer goes off. Heck, the station even has enough beds in it for
half the crew to be asleep. 
So probably *not* applicable to NOC scheduling.
From nanog-bounces+bonomi=mail.r-bonomi.com@nanog.org Sun Apr 17 08:25:23 2011
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:24:40 +0000
Subject: Re: NANOG Digest, Vol 39, Issue 52
From: Coy Hile <coy.hile@coyhile.com>
To: nanog@nanog.org>
>> Rotating shifts between daytime and nighttime is a horrible thing to
>> do to your workers, both for their health and their attention span.
>I wonder how well something like the following would work (seen in
paid fire/EMS circles):24 on, 48 off.
But staff those 24 shifts with maybe 20% more than actually needed to
provide minimum coverage.
That kind of schedule works well *ONLY* where the primary activity is
'sit and wait for something to happen'. Where it is OK to sleep on
the job, as long as you come fully awake when the alarm goes off.