01 / Visible problem
What was happening
Critical product and technical knowledge was spread across people, systems, tickets and undocumented practices.
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01 / Key-person dependency / Case study
From key-person dependency to a transferable operating system
The test was not whether the work was documented. It was whether someone new to technical delivery could use it.
Problem → Investigation → Decision
02 / Investigation
What I looked at
The real test was whether a co-founder who had not held the original technical knowledge could access, understand and continue the work.
03 / What changed
The shift
A non-technical co-founder with little previous involvement in technical delivery was able to understand the environment, retrieve and work with the codebase, build and release the mobile app to TestFlight, resume testing, fix security issues and continue development using the operating system and AI-assisted development.
04 / Result or decision
What the evidence made possible
The operating system could be used beyond the person who held the original knowledge. Documentation was not the outcome. Transferability was.
Test whether knowledge and work can actually transfer, rather than treating written documentation as proof that they have.
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Turning a broken client portfolio into a working system
Important problem. Unclear explanation?
TELL ME WHAT’S STUCK