What happens if your star software developer resigns right now?
This is a common issue, specially for highly talented developers, even if you are taking great care of them. This is why you need to always have a plan in place to manage such cases of attrition, with these objectives in mind:
- Reduce the impact in the operation of your business, ensure business continuity.
- Prevent the loss of key knowledge (domain knowledge).
- Mitigate dependencies on single team members.
We have seen so many situations, where the main, or even the single developer of a company resigns, leaving companies stranded, with no documented knowledge on how their key infrastructure works. This can lead to the operation suddenly becoming paralysed immediately, or within days of the resignation.
Another situation we frequently see is that a key resource can make exaggerated demands to stay in a company, due to high dependency and extreme knowledge concentration.
So how do you prevent this? Here are some general recommendations, but their application can vary greatly depending on the context.
- Always have, or be developing “next in line” plans. This yields great career development plans and allows you to handle unexpected situations.
- Avoid key resources located with the same market/location. This will help to mitigate situations where a new company in the market/location suddenly starts hiring and taking all your key talent. Think about hiring geographically distributed teams.
- Develop contingency plans. How will the team will handle and extended vacation or a medical emergency? This provides freedom for everyone.
Contact us at Angela@latalsoftware.com and get a free initial orientation on how we can approach any software development situation you might have.