Expanding the Team is a Must

We are wrapping up the big upgrade project of the summer. Documentation is being written, and procedures for maintenance are being updated. Throughout the course of the project, our biggest challenge was getting that 100% allocation of staff for the work. Sure we had a project team of three people. However, those three people were still responsible for other projects and daily duties. My best estimate is that we had 60-70% from each of the three people. This still led to inefficiency in the project due to time lost for multitasking. There are numerous studies (professional and otherwise) about how multitasking is not actually working the way we thought it did. (Here, here, here, and here for starters)

The project was for the most part successful. We jumped forward 4 versions on one of our applications and three on the other. For the first time, a technical project in TNS was designed and implemented despite the silos of Network Planning & Integration, Transmission Services Group, and Network Services Group. This change in process was unofficial, but to the credit of management, they did leave us alone to do what we needed to do.

We are now faced with a new problem. That problem is that we have created three different specialists who among them cumulatively hold all the institutional knowledge. This post by Johanna Rothman sums up the problem with specialists. So vacations, sick time, other commitments, or departure from the organization would be a terrible cost to the University. How do we solve this new problem?

1. We start a new project for documentation specifically and then assign different people as the primary resources.
2. We silence arm chair quarterbacks who would rather complain than do the work. Give them the tasks in #1 to avoid this -->.
3. We assess our goals and requirements critically to make sure they haven't changed, then write them down again as commitments. Now we go and do what is written down.
4. We then empower our staff to make changes as necessary to accomplish the goals. Avoiding management debt requires employees acting without constant supervision or fear of retribution.

Does your team face similar issues? How do you deal with it? Can you deal with it?