Business operations concept · updated August 9, 2026
Bus Factor
Bus factor is the number of people who would need to become unavailable before a critical process or piece of knowledge is lost.
Example
If only one person knows how to run the month-end invoicing process, that process has a bus factor of one, a fragile position for the business to be in.
Why it matters
Naming the number directly turns an abstract worry about key-person risk into a concrete target: raise the bus factor above one.
Limits and cautions
Cross-training everyone on everything isn't realistic or necessary. The goal is raising the number for genuinely critical processes, not eliminating all specialization.
Relevance to Stelaah
Stelaah's documented workflows and runbooks give a second person a starting point to pick up a process they haven't run before.
This connection describes product intent, not a guarantee that every plan or workflow supports every related capability.