Within a team if a player falls, the team needs to step up and cover the gap and keep the ball moving forward.
When Bob gets sick, Jill steps in to finish Bob’s work. But this can only happen when Jill knows what Bob was doing and where to find his code.
So we need to cross-train deliberately and make sure important knowledge isn’t siloed to just one or two people. And we need to encourage each team member to make it their responsibility to ensure other teammates can cover for them.
We will know we’ve built a strong cross-trained team when half of the team could theoritically shift to a new project and the remaining half-sized team is able to continue moving forward.
Discussions for your team
- Can someone else pick up your work tomorrow?
- Are there some bundles of knowledge stuck with one person?
- Are team members pairing often enough to spread skills?
- Do we treat the codebase as collectively owned?
- How can increase cross-training within the team?