In the previous articles we talked about different strategies to keep a balance in your team and avoid giving all the responsibility to one developer. But can we detect when the project starts to take the wrong direction? Can we find a test to prove things are improving?

Einenlum - Coding amongst alpacas and pinball machines

Bus Factor measures how many team members can be lost before a project fails. To detect low Bus Factor early, regularly have developers unfamiliar with a project attempt to clone, install, and understand it within 1-2 hours without help, relying only on repository documentation. They document issues like missing setup instructions, unclear domain logic, or undocumented architecture. Repeating this iteratively with different developers reveals implicit knowledge and forces teams to improve documentation and code quality during development rather than delaying it until project end.

Lessons learned about Bus Factor (Part 5/5): Detect it before it is too late