Your product should not depend on one person
If one developer leaving would put your product at risk, the risk already exists. Here is how to reduce it.
Many products are held together by one person who knows how everything fits. It works until that person is on holiday, ill or moves on — and then everything slows down at once.
Spread the knowledge on purpose
Pair developers on tricky work, rotate who handles releases and make code reviews a habit. Knowledge spreads through doing, not through a handover document written in someone's last week.
Write down what is hard to rediscover
Nobody needs documentation for every function. They do need to know why the system is built the way it is, how to deploy it, and what to do when the overnight job fails.
Own your own keys
Repositories, hosting, domains and third-party accounts should belong to the business, with access shared between more than one person. It is the simplest protection there is, and it is often missing.
Written by the OneSyntax team
