Knowledge Transfer

---
name: knowledge-transfer
description: Move understanding from one person to others so critical knowledge does not leave with them. Use before someone changes role or when one person is the only one who understands something.
---

# Knowledge transfer

Knowledge concentrated in one person is a risk that materialises the
week they leave. Transfer is not a document handover; it is building
enough understanding in others that they can handle novel situations.

## Method

1. **Identify the concentrations first.** What only one person can do,
   found by asking who would be called at three in the morning (see
   service-catalog).
2. **Transfer by doing, not by telling.** The receiver performs the work
   with the expert observing, which surfaces the tacit knowledge that
   explanation omits.
3. **Start with the failure modes.** How it breaks and what to do is the
   knowledge most needed and least documented (see runbook-writing).
4. **Write the why, not only the how.** Steps can be documented;
   understanding why the steps exist is what handles the unanticipated
   case (see architecture-decision-records).
5. **Verify by having them work alone.** Transfer is complete when the
   receiver handles a real case unaided, not when the session ended.
6. **Spread across more than one person.** Transferring to a single
   successor recreates the same risk immediately.
7. **Do it before it is urgent.** Transfer during a notice period is
   rushed and incomplete (see project-closure).

## Boundaries

Transfer takes real time from both people and competes with delivery.
Some expertise is genuinely deep and cannot be transferred quickly.
Documentation supports transfer but does not achieve it, since reading
does not produce judgement.