Coverage gap
GlossaryWritten by Burak YReviewed by Burak YLast reviewed 3 September 2026
A time window in which no eligible responder owns the required role. Coverage gaps are rarely created deliberately; they appear at daylight-saving transitions, around public holidays that differ by country, when an override expires earlier than the shift it replaced, and whenever a rotation assumes a person who has since left the team.
In practice
A schedule built in one time zone leaves 02:00–08:00 UTC unassigned every second week after a clock change. Nobody notices until a page falls into the gap and escalates straight to the default fallback.