Someday is here. A lot of work will still have to be done by Enterprise IT. It will have to continue whoever departs.
Consequence: No backup for a position. Production work missed has upper management upset. A key customer’s needs are unmet, a security hole was exploited and made the news, or a plant can’t reopen because no one can find the network keys.
Someday: Learning curve, documentation, relationships, established process – doesn’t matter what, but management failure to prioritize a backup has now put things at risk. In large enterprise IT this becomes even more difficult when responsibility is farmed out for critical tasks to outsource or across departments.
Now what: Recognize that not all jobs have a short enough learning curve that a top performer can jump in to cover the problem. Supervisors must be asked, and held accountable, to identify critical backups and make sure that the work has a primary and backup – even more for extremely critical tasks.
Checkbox item: Using a list of critical functions list the primary and backup roles and make sure that they are constantly filled as a priority. This list is the people side of the list of critical tasks and must be checked explicitly by management at most quarterly. It might be possible to survive a short time without backup, but someday will come soon.
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