FIVE PEOPLE / ONE ANSWER
How to schedule a team of five without the chase.
Five people is small enough to know personally and large enough for a missed message to create a gap. Use a short, repeatable process so the schedule does not depend on memory.
Set the rules before the names
Write down the coverage needed, operating hours and any role or skill that must be present. Then ask each person for available windows, hard blocks and preferences using the same format.
Coverage
What must be covered and when?
Constraints
Who cannot work which periods?
Preferences
Which requests can be balanced?
Review the four things that cause trouble
- An uncovered period.
- Two people assigned to the same role or shift.
- A hard availability conflict.
- A change that has not reached everyone.
Publish, then stop searching
Once the five-person rota is reviewed, give it one home and make changes visible. Shift Helper is being built around this small-team handoff.