Knowledge Transfer on Simple Enough Blog

Testing Your Bus Factor: The Muted Expert Exercise

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:00:00 +0200

Throughout this series, we’ve seen how to pass knowledge on: in real time, in writing, through organization. One question remains, and it’s the one we carefully avoid: does it actually work? You believe a team is robust because it documents and pairs — until the day a departure reveals the gaps. This article suggests not waiting for that day, and measuring your vulnerability while there’s still time.

I. What is the bus factor?

The bus factor answers a blunt question: how many people would have to disappear for a project to grind to a halt? The name comes from a deliberately crude image — how many team members could be hit by a bus before the work becomes impossible.

The Setups That Make Knowledge Circulate: Rotation, Game Days and Guilds

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 16:00:00 +0200

In the guide to collaboration modes, we saw how to pass knowledge on in real time (the tacit) and in writing (the explicit). But a team can master all these practices and still watch its knowledge concentrate in a few people. The reason is structural: without a setup that forces it, knowledge follows the natural slope of specialization. This article deals with the organizational layer — not how we work together, but how we arrange things so that knowledge circulates by default.

Sharing Knowledge Asynchronously: Code Review, ADRs and Docs-as-Code

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:00:00 +0200

In the guide to collaboration modes, we set out a rule: explicit knowledge travels asynchronously. Where synchronous modes pass on intuition through contact, asynchronous modes capture what can be written down — and produce a trace that survives departures. But you still have to avoid the classic trap: documentation that no one reads and no one keeps up to date. This article details the practices that work, and why.

I. The strength and the limit of writing

Writing has an advantage no synchronous mode matches: it depends on no one. It can be read at three in the morning during an incident, six months after its author has left, by someone who wasn’t there when the decision was made. It’s the bedrock of a team’s memory.

Working Together in Real Time: Pair, Mob, Shadowing and Swarming

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0200

In the guide to collaboration modes, we set out a rule: tacit knowledge travels only through contact. Synchronous modes are therefore irreplaceable — but they come at a cost, and that cost is scary. “Two people on a single task means halving productivity.” This article proves the opposite and details the four main ways of working together in real time, with their variants and their pitfalls.

I. Why synchronous work is irreplaceable

An expert diagnosing an outage isn’t following a procedure: they eliminate hypotheses at a speed they couldn’t even describe themselves. Ask them to write down their method and they’ll hand you an impoverished list. That knowledge — the order in which you look at things, what triggers a suspicion — exists only in action.

Sharing Knowledge in a Tech Team: A Guide to Collaboration Modes

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:00:00 +0200

In “When the last expert disappears,” we saw why a team’s memory is an invisible form of technical debt. What remains is how to fix it. Pair programming, mob, shadowing, code review, ADRs, on-call rotation: there is no shortage of practices, and that is precisely the problem — you don’t know which one to pick. This guide maps them out and gives a simple rule for deciding.

I. Two kinds of knowledge: tacit and explicit

Before choosing a practice, you need to know what you are passing on. All team knowledge falls into two families, and they don’t obey the same laws.

When the Last Expert Leaves

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 12:00:00 +0200

In almost every organization there is a system people talk about in hushed tones. It has been running for ten years, it is critical, and exactly one person truly knows how it works. The day that person leaves — retirement, resignation, transfer — it isn’t just a colleague walking out: it’s an entire library closing down without ever having been copied. That lost knowledge is a form of technical debt, the most insidious of all, because it shows up on no dashboard.