Concentrated expertise is dangerous for any team, and tech teams are particularly susceptible–but you can overcome the tyranny of the virtuoso by systematising her vital information.
A company I know sells products based on carefully curated data in a narrow domain, but the only person in the tech team who knows anything about this specialty is the CTO. “Don’t worry,” they told me, “he’s teaching a junior engineer how to run the data pipeline.” That didn’t allay my fears one bit! Bitter experience has taught me that what you need here is a library that captures the key information so anyone in the team can find and use it. Reams of documents aren’t necessary; a good suite of automated tests or a set of checklists are often quite sufficient. And you can use the “stone soup” method to create it: make a blank wiki or test harness and require that the expert record what she’s doing there every time, while showing everyone in the team how and why it works. Brains can get hired away or win the lottery; systems endure.
This first appeared in my weekly Squirrel Squadron email, which goes out every Monday, and was originally posted on 26th September 2022. To get my provocative thoughts and tips direct to your inbox first, sign up here: https://squirrelsquadron.com/