Laws of Software Engineering · Pattern
Pattern
Bus Factor
The number of people you would have to lose before the project was in serious trouble.
How to use it. A bus factor of one is an alarm. Pair people up, write things down, and rotate ownership. Treat single points of knowledge as incidents waiting to happen.
How it gets misused. Used as a number to game. Adding nominal owners on paper does not change the real bus factor.
Related
- Practice Pair Programming Two people, one keyboard, one piece of work. They swap roles regularly.
- Practice Mob Programming The whole team, one keyboard, one piece of work. The driver types. The navigators direct. Roles rotate frequently.