Becoming a Single Point of Failure
For quite some time now, my main activity at work has shifted to a different project. Nevertheless I'm still working on the old project for a smaller part of my time in a quite small team.
Some time ago I've been informed that my project manager for this project will leave the company and take on new opportunities. This leaves me as the only person for this project, which has an almost-complete overview of the systems, interfaces, designs and most of the technical aspects of this project.
Of course my manager is currently busy transferring as much of his knowledge to a replacement but it's impossible to "copy" the know-how of a formerly dozens-of-people-sized team within a few weeks. Much of the knowledge we take for granted and forget to transfer to our substitutes falls into that category also with stuff we have in the back of our heads and comes back only in situations when we hit a similar problem or situation. Which means, that I'll be the last person for quite some areas which will be able to manage, overview, design, fix and maintain.
I'm now officially a Single Point of Failure, as well as some other people on the same project but other topics.