Free to use, free to adapt
Resources
Six resources for finding and reducing key person risk. All released under CC0, so you can copy them, rewrite them and use them internally with no attribution.
Most people work through these in order. The audit tells you where you are exposed, the checklist covers the immediate risks, and the succession guide is the longer piece of work.
The audit is written to work whatever you run. Read it alongside the overlay for your setting, which translates the vocabulary and adds the rows a neutral document cannot carry.
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Framework · 60 to 90 minutes
Bus factor audit
Score every part of your operation by how many people could actually pick it up tomorrow. Covers technical systems, governance and decision making, and the relationships nobody has written down.
Use this when: You suspect you have single points of failure but cannot say where.
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Templates · Ongoing
Succession planning guide
Timelines and handoff checklists for the three shapes a departure takes: the planned exit, the sudden absence, and the slow handover that runs over a year or more.
Use this when: Someone is stepping back, or you want a plan before anyone does.
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Checklist · 2 to 3 hours
Legacy checklist
What to put in place in case you die or are suddenly unable to work. Access, credentials, who announces it, what they say, and who holds the authority to decide anything at all.
Use this when: You hold access or knowledge that nobody else has.
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Practical guide · 1 hour
Setting up legacy contacts
Platform by platform instructions for naming someone who can reach your accounts if you cannot. Code hosting, social media, password managers, Apple, Google and Samsung.
Use this when: You want the immediate risks covered this afternoon.
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Workshop · 45 to 90 minutes
Scenario cards
Twenty five situations to put in front of a team and work through before one of them actually happens. The sudden disappearance, the sole signatory, the founder who will not let go.
Use this when: You want to stress test resilience with other people in the room.
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Practical guide · Reference
Closing something down
How to stop well, which is sometimes the right answer and is almost always done badly. Deciding when the time has come, telling people properly, the last day, and preserving the record rather than destroying it.
Use this when: Continuing is no longer the right answer, or you are working out whether it is.
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Workshop · Reference
Facilitator's guide
How to run a scenario session when you have never run one before. Formats from forty five minutes to half a day, what to do when a group argues with the scenario, and how to close so that something actually changes.
Use this when: You are running the session rather than sitting in it.
Making these fit your organisation
The resources are written in neutral language and then translated. There are four overlays, for open source projects, charities and NGOs, companies, and small teams. Each covers the terms that change, the risks that only show up in that setting, and the failure it most often turns out to be.
If your setting is not covered, or one of them gets something wrong, tell me what is missing. That is how the existing four got written.
Contributing
These improve when more people put their experience into them.
- Open an issue to suggest a resource, flag something unclear, or share a scenario
- Join a discussion about what has worked and what has not
- Open a pull request to add your expertise directly