Prepare well in advance
Alright,
If we want to claim we are ready - we need lot of preparation, mock runs! That's what you should do before going oncall.
- Read your team's runbooks and ensure you try them out, don't simply read like a news paper. If runbook says - search logs - you should actually search logs. If runbooks says run this command - you should actually run that command on a test system. This is important, make sure you have access to a dev/test environment where you can try these without fear of destroying everything.
- Remember, once you are on-call ; You will be bombarded with issues and very little time to act. The more you prepare the more independently you can handle issues.
Shadow!
You don't need to shadow 24/7 but if you know current on-call is good at their job try to shadow them in zoom meetings while they are actually troubleshooting, mitigating issues. I personally learned a lot in this way. Don't ever miss a chance to participate in major incidents where a lot of folks will be pulled in and live troubleshooting will happen. That's great learning opportunity. Make time and keep shadowing.
Be Curious
- Be curious - if you don't know something ask around.
- Be curious