Tribal Knowledge refers to a dependency on people for the dissemination of important information and the execution of critical processes. There are two "fears" related to Tribal Knowledge 1. A significant branch of important information or a critical competency will be lost if an employee leaves the company 2. A significant branch of important information is safeguarded by an individual or a team for reasons other than the [[Functional Access Only]] or [[Draw Clean Lines]] principles Overcoming the challenges of Tribal Knowledge may require aligning longer term incentives so that team members have Skin in the Game. ### Bigger Problems A sub-category of tribal knowledge is the intellectual property that is stored in code. [[Version Control]] is an invariant pattern of any [[Modern Business]] that writes their own software. ### Related Patterns [[Writing Stack]] - we talk about using [[Stack Overflow Teams]] to dynamically move tribal knowledge to a formalized system over time and out of [[Semi-Ephemeral Chat]]. Good [[Culture Fit]] practices can help build a team that thinks long term and avoids a situation in which tribal knowledge translates to job security. ### Categories #documentation #process #information #incentives #people #teams