Body of Knowledge · Glossary
Bus factor
The number of people who could leave before critical knowledge or capability is lost. It is a dependency to engineer away, and once the person has given notice it is an option with an expiry date.
Where the standard develops it
- TJ-2Technical debtRecognising, quantifying, and scheduling repayment.
- TJ-3Code review and quality standardsIncluding standards for AI-generated code.
Related terms
- AI governance
- The explicit, proportionate policy for AI-assisted work.
- Aligned autonomy
- Direction, priorities and boundary standards set centrally, with methods left to teams.
- Contract testing
- Automated verification of the agreement between a service and its consumers, which catches a breaking change at the boundary before integration does.
- Innovation budget
- An explicit, bounded allocation for evaluating new technology, with pilots that have criteria, a contained blast radius and an honest review.
- Interface discipline
- Versioning, a deprecation policy, contract tests and communicated change for a widely used interface.
- Paved road
- A well-supported default platform and toolchain that makes the good path the easy one.
- Service ownership
- Every service has a named owner responsible for its operation, its interface stability, its documentation and its future.
- Strangler pattern
- Replacing a legacy system incrementally by growing the new capability around it and routing traffic away piece by piece until the old system can be retired.
Cite this definition
Chicago, BibTeX and licence →Engineering Management Academy. (2026). Bus factor. In Engineering Management Academy Body of Knowledge (Version 3.1, GLO.bus-factor). https://www.engineeringmanagement.academy/body-of-knowledge/glossary/bus-factor