Employees are entitled to holidays and there are times they’ll get promoted or move onto different roles. Plus people will have a range of responsibilities.
THIS SHOULD NOT BE A SHOW STOPPER TO THE BUSINESS!
Staff should own processes but what does this mean and look like it practice? A good rule of thumb is:
Enabling other teams members to do the job with as little friction as possibleThis includes:
- Keep documentation up to date and clear
- Understand the process and its business value – including decommissioning if it now longer serves a purpose
- Maintenance to avoid falling out of support
- Staying up to date with features and roadmap
- Any I missed? Please comment!
Why does this matter?
As we saw at the start, that person will go on holiday, have other responsibilities and may even move on to a different role or company.
BUT
By keeping documentation up to date and managing the app/system, leads to a really smooth handover to the new owner is. Even just bringing in a new team member means they can bring immediate value by completing work that has been clearly and well documented.
Again, if that owner is not around there is no space for surprise failures because it’s well maintained, it’s not suddenly on someone’s plate to get done while they’re not around, it can be easily delegated.
And when something does go wrong then there is a owner who can move in the right direction to get it sorted, perhaps bringing the right people in the room or contact the correct support so any issues are not issues for long.
This is all well and fine, someone maintaining documentation, but do your team know how to find, do you have a central, searchable storage so your team don’t waste time trying to find the documentation or do they not even bother to look because more often than not, nothing is documented?
Do you already do something similar? Would love to hear how you manage your processes and keep momentum when teams are busy, on holiday or turning over
