The Bus Factor

Years ago a boss of mine once commented on what would happen to the project if I was run over by a bus.

Thinking about it I then decided to take it as a compliment. Apparently he was suggesting that I had sufficient importance on the project that if I was to “kick the bucket” in a horrible public transport accident, the project would be in trouble.

Apparently there is even a wiki on this kind of thing, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor.

Of course other situations could occur which would have similar consequences for example, having a baby, getting a new job, winning the lottery.

Well one of those could happen, the other two are as likely as a Michael Jackson comeback Tour.

To be honest I feel that there is nothing a developer can write that cant be debugged by a similarly qualified developer and the concept of the Bus Factor is a little over exaggerated.

But of course, we all document our code anyway!