If you lost your tech lead on your project tomorrow...

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begeland

Question for discussion: If you lost your technical lead on your project tomorrow, what would be the first three things you would do?

This is not a quiz :) Everyone reacts a little differently and this can happen. Literally overnight. I had a remote tech lead leave a project to get married and she was gone for two months. I found out about it less than a week before the event - her supervisor knew it was coming, but failed to inform me. And other situations can arise...like an unfortunate accident that puts someone in the hospital or worse. What would you do? Let's discuss....
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dhaughey
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Our technical manager left recently at short notice. It took time to find a replacement, to the extent that his replacement was only available the week after he left. Our main concern was continuity as processes and working practices were established and running smoothly. We decided the best course of action was for our exiting technical manager to have a handover call with his replacement before he started. During the call he handed over details of processes, working practices and extensive documentation. The new guy hit the ground running and provided continuity for our technical team. It shows the worth of waiting for the right person, even if you can't have a face-to-face handover.

The main lesson I'm taking from this situation, is to make sure you keep good documentation, because you never know when you might lose an important team member. You don't want their knowledge of your working practices and processes leaving with them.

Duncan
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kwalford
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It is really difficult to answer this but I suppose I would approach this by not having just one single tech contact.

By having multiple tech contacts, with advanced tech knowledge, helps to manage the risk of loosing one of them by having others to turn too.

Many thanks,
Kit
rexdean01
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In management over projects, it does happen that some of the individuals leave a project midway due to a variety of reasons like illness, accident, leaving a job or any other. If the individuals who are leaving are men with expert skills, their absence is bound to affect a project.

Before a project starts, a business has to accept the fact that such a situation can happen at anytime in a project and should always have a backup plan already in place. To counter such situations, it needs to have an active training mechanism in place where team members should be given a chance to acquire newer skills and polish their already existing skills. Meetings can be held after a duration of a week or 15 days or 2-3 times in a month when a person higher in the job hierarchy sits together with his subordinates and they can discuss actively over the business matters.

He can pass on to them some of his skills and share his experiences with them which can help them greatly. Such sessions will cost some time and money, but ultimately it is in the best interest of a business. As people who work together, definitely learn something from each other.

The other thing to concentrate on is networking with job consultants and placement agencies who can provide some really talented men, but will you get them when you need them the most depends a lot on your luck as time is fast running out for you and you cannot depend on luck too much. That is a short term measure but it can help at times.

One can also ask for the person who is leaving to arrange the right person as people live in communities and there are chances that they know someone who has the same qualifications and skills as they possess themselves.
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