On-Call Handoff Checklist for Go Platforms

Outgoing on-call engineers document platform state so incoming on-call starts with context, not a blank pager.

Use this checklist at every shift change for Go microservices, workers, and gRPC tiers.

How to Use This Checklist

Complete within 30 minutes of shift end; incoming engineer acknowledges in writing.
Link dashboards and tickets; do not rely on verbal-only transfer.
Mark N/A for quiet shifts but still confirm alert routing and deploy freeze status.
Store the handoff note in the team channel or ticket template for searchability.
Escalate open SEV-1/2 incidents with a live bridge, not only async notes.

Platform Health Summary

Active incidents: List SEV, status, current mitigation, next check time.
- Open: link incident channel and commander.
- None: state "no active SEV-1/2" explicitly.
Recent deploys (last 24h): Service, SHA, canary status, known regressions.
- Include Go image tag and any GOMEMLIMIT / GOGC env changes.
Error budget / SLO burn: Which services are yellow or red.
- Note if latency-only burn without error spike (GC/pool suspects).
Dependency status: DB failover, cache instability, upstream outages.
- Separate shared-platform issues from single-service noise.

Go Runtime & Capacity

Memory and OOM: Any OOMKilled pods in last shift; limits vs GOMEMLIMIT.
- Link heap/goroutine dashboards.
GC / latency anomalies: Unexplained p99 bumps; GC pause charts.
- Note Go 1.26 upgrade canaries if applicable.
Goroutine trends: Services with climbing goroutine baselines.
- Link open tickets for leak investigations.
Connection pools: sql.DB wait metrics elevated on any tier.
- Document MaxOpenConns experiments in flight.
HPA / replica changes: Autoscale events during peak or incident.
- Warn if replica doubling affects DB connection math.

Tooling Access

pprof / admin access: Token rotation dates, port-forward runbook links.
- Confirm incoming has VPN/k8s access to admin ports.
Log and trace systems: Saved queries for top services.
- Include request_id search examples.
Rollback levers: Who can approve prod rollback; last successful SHA per service.
- Feature flag console link for kill switches.
Escalation paths: Secondary, EM, vendor contacts for DB/cloud.
- Time zones for upstream maintainers.

Open Work & Risks

In-progress mitigations: Canary GC tuning, pool resize, flag at 50%.
- Expected completion and success criteria.
Scheduled maintenance: Migrations, cert renewals, game days.
- Conflict with on-call coverage?
Flaky alerts: Alerts muted or threshold-adjusted temporarily.
- Expiry time for mute; owner to fix root alert.
Known tech debt: Services without GOMEMLIMIT, public pprof risk, missing WaitCount export.
- Risk rank for incoming awareness.
Post-mortem actions due: Open P0/P1 from prior incidents.
- Owner if overdue.

Incoming Acknowledgment

Incoming engineer name and start time: <name, UTC>.
Questions clarified: List any ambiguities resolved live.
Bridge status: Stay on bridge if SEV-1 active; else async OK.

Applying the Checklist in Order

Items 1-4: Customer and SLO picture first - incoming needs impact context.
Items 5-9: Go-specific signals that generic infra handoffs omit.
Items 10-13: Access and levers - verify before outgoing logs off.
Items 14-18: Forward-looking risk so the next shift is not surprised.
Items 19-21: Close the loop with explicit acknowledgment.

FAQs

How detailed should a quiet shift handoff be?

Still complete tooling and deploy sections.

"No incidents" takes one line; access verification remains mandatory.

Should handoff include non-Go services?

Yes for dependencies and shared platforms.

Mark which items are Go-specific vs org-wide.

Where should handoff notes live?

Durable: ticket, Confluence, or pinned Slack with date.

Ephemeral chat alone fails next-week searches.

What if outgoing is paged during handoff?

Extend overlap or assign backup outgoing until SEV stabilizes.

Never hand off mid-mitigation without bridge.

How do we hand off profile capture duty?

Document in-progress profile jobs, pod names, and S3 upload paths.

Incoming continues collection if window is open.

Should we list every microservice?

Cover tier-1 revenue paths and any service yellow on SLO.

Others link to fleet health dashboard.

How often rotate pprof tokens?

Team policy; handoff must note expiry within the incoming shift.

Broken tokens waste SEV-1 minutes.

What about weekend coverage?

Friday handoff includes Monday deploy freeze, scheduled jobs, and reduced staffing escalation.

Do contractors get the same checklist?

Yes.

Access section confirms their kubectl/VPN scope.

How does this relate to post-mortems?

Handoff links open post-mortem actions.

Closed incidents still note lessons learned affecting alerts.

Incident Response for Go Services - triage overview
Post-Mortem Template for Go Incidents - RCA structure
Production Troubleshooting Basics - first-step tooling
Production Troubleshooting Best Practices - prevention habits
Health, Readiness & Liveness Probes - probe behavior
Prometheus Metrics & RED-USE Dashboards - dashboards

Stack versions: This page was written for Go 1.26.x (Green Tea GC default, go fix modernizers - verify patch at build), chi (latest - verify at build), gin (latest - verify at build), echo (latest - verify at build), google.golang.org/grpc (latest - verify at build), sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime (latest - verify at build), kubebuilder (latest - verify at build), tinygo (latest - verify board targets at build), wazero (latest - verify at build), and golangci-lint (latest - verify linter set at build).

Use this checklist at every shift change for Go microservices, workers, and gRPC tiers.

How to Use This Checklist

Complete within 30 minutes of shift end; incoming engineer acknowledges in writing.
Link dashboards and tickets; do not rely on verbal-only transfer.
Mark N/A for quiet shifts but still confirm alert routing and deploy freeze status.
Store the handoff note in the team channel or ticket template for searchability.
Escalate open SEV-1/2 incidents with a live bridge, not only async notes.

Platform Health Summary

Active incidents: List SEV, status, current mitigation, next check time.
- Open: link incident channel and commander.
- None: state "no active SEV-1/2" explicitly.
Recent deploys (last 24h): Service, SHA, canary status, known regressions.
- Include Go image tag and any GOMEMLIMIT / GOGC env changes.
Error budget / SLO burn: Which services are yellow or red.
- Note if latency-only burn without error spike (GC/pool suspects).
Dependency status: DB failover, cache instability, upstream outages.
- Separate shared-platform issues from single-service noise.

Go Runtime & Capacity

Memory and OOM: Any OOMKilled pods in last shift; limits vs GOMEMLIMIT.
- Link heap/goroutine dashboards.
GC / latency anomalies: Unexplained p99 bumps; GC pause charts.
- Note Go 1.26 upgrade canaries if applicable.
Goroutine trends: Services with climbing goroutine baselines.
- Link open tickets for leak investigations.
Connection pools: sql.DB wait metrics elevated on any tier.
- Document MaxOpenConns experiments in flight.
HPA / replica changes: Autoscale events during peak or incident.
- Warn if replica doubling affects DB connection math.

Tooling Access

pprof / admin access: Token rotation dates, port-forward runbook links.
- Confirm incoming has VPN/k8s access to admin ports.
Log and trace systems: Saved queries for top services.
- Include request_id search examples.
Rollback levers: Who can approve prod rollback; last successful SHA per service.
- Feature flag console link for kill switches.
Escalation paths: Secondary, EM, vendor contacts for DB/cloud.
- Time zones for upstream maintainers.

Open Work & Risks

In-progress mitigations: Canary GC tuning, pool resize, flag at 50%.
- Expected completion and success criteria.
Scheduled maintenance: Migrations, cert renewals, game days.
- Conflict with on-call coverage?
Flaky alerts: Alerts muted or threshold-adjusted temporarily.
- Expiry time for mute; owner to fix root alert.
Known tech debt: Services without GOMEMLIMIT, public pprof risk, missing WaitCount export.
- Risk rank for incoming awareness.
Post-mortem actions due: Open P0/P1 from prior incidents.
- Owner if overdue.

Incoming Acknowledgment

Incoming engineer name and start time: <name, UTC>.
Questions clarified: List any ambiguities resolved live.
Bridge status: Stay on bridge if SEV-1 active; else async OK.

Applying the Checklist in Order

Items 1-4: Customer and SLO picture first - incoming needs impact context.
Items 5-9: Go-specific signals that generic infra handoffs omit.
Items 10-13: Access and levers - verify before outgoing logs off.
Items 14-18: Forward-looking risk so the next shift is not surprised.
Items 19-21: Close the loop with explicit acknowledgment.

FAQs

How detailed should a quiet shift handoff be?

Still complete tooling and deploy sections.

"No incidents" takes one line; access verification remains mandatory.

Should handoff include non-Go services?

Yes for dependencies and shared platforms.

Mark which items are Go-specific vs org-wide.

Where should handoff notes live?

Durable: ticket, Confluence, or pinned Slack with date.

Ephemeral chat alone fails next-week searches.

What if outgoing is paged during handoff?

Extend overlap or assign backup outgoing until SEV stabilizes.

Never hand off mid-mitigation without bridge.

How do we hand off profile capture duty?

Document in-progress profile jobs, pod names, and S3 upload paths.

Incoming continues collection if window is open.

Should we list every microservice?

Cover tier-1 revenue paths and any service yellow on SLO.

Others link to fleet health dashboard.

How often rotate pprof tokens?

Team policy; handoff must note expiry within the incoming shift.

Broken tokens waste SEV-1 minutes.

What about weekend coverage?

Friday handoff includes Monday deploy freeze, scheduled jobs, and reduced staffing escalation.

Do contractors get the same checklist?

Yes.

Access section confirms their kubectl/VPN scope.

How does this relate to post-mortems?

Handoff links open post-mortem actions.

Closed incidents still note lessons learned affecting alerts.

Incident Response for Go Services - triage overview
Post-Mortem Template for Go Incidents - RCA structure
Production Troubleshooting Basics - first-step tooling
Production Troubleshooting Best Practices - prevention habits
Health, Readiness & Liveness Probes - probe behavior
Prometheus Metrics & RED-USE Dashboards - dashboards

Stack versions: This page was written for Go 1.26.x (Green Tea GC default, go fix modernizers - verify patch at build), chi (latest - verify at build), gin (latest - verify at build), echo (latest - verify at build), google.golang.org/grpc (latest - verify at build), sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime (latest - verify at build), kubebuilder (latest - verify at build), tinygo (latest - verify board targets at build), wazero (latest - verify at build), and golangci-lint (latest - verify linter set at build).

On-Call Handoff Checklist for Go Platforms

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On-Call Handoff Checklist for Go Platforms