What’s your bus factor?

Bus factor:

The minimum number of team members that have to suddenly disappear from a project before the project stalls due to lack of knowledgeable or competent personnel. [Reference]

In other words, it's the number of people that have to get hit by a bus (or otherwise "disappear") before your systems become useless to you.

Obviously, the lower the number, the riskier your situation.

If the loss of any given person would cause important projects to grind to a halt, your bus factor is “1”.

You’ll probably want to address that.

Here's the thing:

Most people would rather not think about this stuff. It’s a little dark.

But life is full of surprises, both good and bad.

Think about this:

If one of your critical programs has a bus factor of “1,” increasing it to “2” (say, by cross-training one additional person) means you've just cut your risk in half.

Not a bad investment, I'd say.

All the best,
A.