Single point of failure

Just a little bit of background of myself, I started my working life as technical analyst then switch to programmer after 2 years, and my career path grow to become software development manager today.

I have been working in an IT companies, from big to small enterprise and figure out most of the IT departments in Malaysia having the most people Single point of failures among departments. It is not so healthy for a company to have many SPOF in one department.

Throughout my experiences, I managed to overcome this problem in my previous workplace provided the turnover rate is not high. I think most importantly is documentation for the system need to be solid, I personally think some of the company not willing to spend money getting the product stable with better documentation. This will cause the system will only rely on a single person as product will customize and getting lots of enhancement on it.

Secondly will be the process management, and some of the IT department don’t actually look at how to implant a process to get everyone follow on the standard like coding standard, documentation standard, and so on. Process might be a pain to implement at the beginning, but it is really useful when everything is getting into the right path and move along with it.  

Thirdly will be knowledge transfers, I think most of the team doesn’t do knowledge transfer if it is not necessary (resignation). In my team, I like to organize knowledge transfer (sharing) from week to week. This allow the team member share all the know ledge among the products, and share the pain if the product having problem.

Fourthly will be the most important one: people. Most of the organizations fall into this trap because people will choose not to follow the standard and start to hold the more responsibilities on the department. They often a group of senior person who work based on the ‘knowledge is power’ principle. Old style thinking and this will harm the company the most. ‘I can write my own pay cheque’ and ‘they can’t fire me’ are two beliefs these people maintain and indeed seek to exploit.  I think top management should be blame when this happen, because they always focus on talents rather than keep those who can work as a team.

Above are only my personal opinions as throughout my observations, most of the top management will never look at keeping a team and always praise the one who can on call 24 hours per day. This will create people Single Point of Failure after few years time. :D