Single Points of Failure - Cultivated Management Newsletter
Hi,
Hope you are well.
Single points of failure are a sign of bad management
An important item on your To Do list as a manager, is to mitigate against single points of failure.
These failures may be within the product or service you're building, or it may be people, or systems within a process.
I heard a manager once say "we have to give everyone in my team a bonus because if they walk we'll be doomed as they're the only ones who know how the service works - the money will have to come from someone else's budget".
What? From someone else's budget?
Someone who removed single points of failure? Someone who ensures continued service should someone walk? Someone who built resilience and succession planning in to their work? Someone who wasn't at the mercy of heroes and single points of failure?
Be the manager who has few single points of failure. A single point of failure can bring down an entire team, product or process. Staple yourself to work and track where it goes, making a note of each single point of failure along the way (people, process, services, databases, etc). Trust me - there are always single points of failure. Then fix them, patch them, mitigate against them or deal with them in some way. Your on-going success needs it.
Go forth and make it all resilient.
Until next time.
Rob..