Bus Factor

Bus factor (or truck factor) is a project’s number of team members who, if run over by a bus, would compromise the project. The smallest bus factor is 1. Larger numbers are preferable.

Basically, a low bus factor represents a single point of failure. The bus symbolise events that threaten team members: illness, vacations, and departures are all likely to occur on a project. Efforts should be made to increase the bus factor on any project that is critical to the organization to avoid failure in case any of the above happens.

Practices that help increase bus factor: [[Collective Code Ownership]]