This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by Jared Richardson.
Original Post: Do you know your Bus Number?
Feed Title: Jared's Weblog
Feed URL: http://www.jaredrichardson.net/blog/index.rss
Feed Description: Jared's weblog.
The web site was created after the launch of the book "Ship It!" and discusses issues from Continuous Integration to web hosting providers.
Your bus number is the number of developers youd have to
lose to disable your project.
Whether they quit or get hit by the
proverbial bus, losing this many people will derail your project.
If you have a single superstar who keeps all the project details
to themselves, you have a bus number of one, and thats a
problem. If every member of your team can fill in for any other
person, then you would have to lose your entire team for the
project to be completely derailed. Ideally, you want your bus
number to be equal to the number of your team members, but
at the very least you should work to raise the number. If the loss
of one or two key people can devastate your product, take
steps to raise that number.
Tracer Bullet Development automatically raises your bus number.
When team members from adjacent layers work together
to define their shared interfaces, they are sharing knowledge
about each layers operations. This picture, shared between
the two teams, makes it possible for your groups members to
move between layers more easily. At a minimum, everyone has
a basic understanding of what adjacent layers do and how
they work.
If youve never considered your projects bus number, take a
few minutes to survey your team. Whats your bus number?
What steps can you take to raise it?
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