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Bus Factor Calculator

Calculate your team's bus factor and knowledge concentration risk. Identify critical knowledge silos before they become problems.

Enter Your Team Data

Key Capabilities

Critical Systems/Modules

Optional: List specific critical areas and how many people can maintain each

Enter your team size and at least one capability metric to see your bus factor analysis.

About Bus Factor

The bus factor (also known as the "lottery factor" or "truck factor") is the minimum number of team members who would need to suddenly disappear before critical knowledge is lost. It measures your team's resilience to unexpected departures, whether from resignations, illness, promotions, or winning the lottery.

Why It Matters

  • • Business continuity and risk management
  • • Reduced stress on key individuals
  • • Better vacation coverage and work-life balance
  • • Faster onboarding for new team members
  • • More flexible team assignments

How to Improve

  • • Pair programming and mob programming
  • • Comprehensive documentation and runbooks
  • • Cross-training and rotation schedules
  • • Code reviews as learning opportunities
  • • Regular knowledge-sharing sessions
Bus Factor 1

Critical - Single point of failure

Bus Factor 2

High Risk - Still vulnerable

Bus Factor 3-4

Medium - Some resilience

Bus Factor 5+

Healthy - Well distributed

Want to track this automatically?

CodePulse connects to your GitHub and calculates these metrics in real-time. No more manual data entry or spreadsheets.

Free tier available. No credit card required.