Breaking Barriers: Knowledge Proliferation

As the business world becomes increasingly complex and competitive, companies are looking for ways to stay ahead of the curve. However, sometimes leaders depend too much on "go-to" subject matter experts to make critical decisions, rather than following a more collaborative or data-driven process. This type of team setting is particularly prominent when transforming a legacy application that has been in existence for over 10 years, where one person or a few team members are responsible for the transformation process.

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) have in-depth knowledge and expertise in a specific domain and play a critical role in every organization. However, the challenge comes in scaling to the demands of transformation programs or business needs.

Now, the question is how many business demands can a SME handle at any given point in time? As the backlog grows, every decision must go through these critical resources and can become a bottleneck to the progress, instead demonstrating progress on business initiatives.

Several factors could have led to this type of operating model:

• Tribal Knowledge: Consider the scenario of legacy applications that have been in use for over a decade. Throughout its life cycle, a multitude of decisions, assumptions, and both effective and ineffective practices have been implemented, and only a few members of the current team have witnessed the application's evolution and contribute to daily support activities. This accumulation of knowledge and experience is commonly referred to as "tribal knowledge."
• Do not rock the boat: if you have highly skilled individual who is performing well and delivering results, it may be risky to make changes or introduce new variables that could disrupt that success.
• Career built on a specialized skill: A career built on a specialized skill can make SMEs feel uncertain about transitioning to a different technology, as they may perceive a loss of job security.
• Lack of redundancy / continuous learning and growth within the organization

How to solve this scenario:

• Start by identifying the areas of your organization where single-threaded resources are prevalent. These are areas where a specific skill or expertise is crucial for business operations,
• Develop a career development plan: Work with the single-threaded resources to develop a career development plan that includes training, mentoring, and cross-training opportunities. This plan should aim to broaden their skills and knowledge in areas beyond their current expertise.
• Focus on succession planning: Focus on succession planning by identifying potential candidates who can be groomed to replace single-threaded resources. This includes developing a talent pool within the organization and ensuring that key knowledge and expertise are documented and shared.
• Promote knowledge democratization: it's best to take advantage of legacy application modernization. This can be achieved by pairing eager team members with an SME, encouraging their participation in program meetings, and assign them relevant background tasks to expand their skills and knowledge.
• Establish a supportive environment that allows SMEs to take risks without the fear of failure is crucial for encouraging them to expand their expertise. This type of environment allows them to learn from their experiences and utilize the lessons learned to make informed decisions.

To conclude in sports analogy, particularly Cricket, It is true that in the past, the Indian cricket team have overly dependent on Sachin Tendulkar's performances, which could have led to losses when he did not perform well. But the team has evolved over the years, and the focus now is on collective performance and contributions from all players, which has led to more consistent success.