On Redundancy & Subject Matter Experts

Merriam-Webster defines redundancy as “the part of a message that can be eliminated without loss of essential information”, but in engineering redundancy refers to a backup of processes or systems as a fail-safe. Having these redundancies not only ensures for a more reliable program or machine, in human terms, redundancies allow for multiple discussions about the same thing. It cannot be stressed enough, that these conversations are necessary for the safe keeping and necessary changing of said processes.

Redundancies are what subject matter experts call, Backup Plans.

For the purposes of subject matter expertise, redundancies are the processes and procedures that are utilized in the event that a system is not available, is no longer functioning properly, or simply broken. Redundancies are what subject matter experts call, backup plans.

When any organization or institution becomes so dependent on a single system, the potential for things going wrong have been increased, not decreased. When large organizations begin to consolidate their knowledge banks for ease of retrieval, to tighten up the budget, or to gain a single oversight, they also run the risk of everything not working – All at once. How then, does a industrial giant with dozens and dozens of Tbs worth of information cope when these systems fail – in short. they don’t. Without allowing for system redundancy, subject matters experts with access to the system who reside outside the consolidated server site, are what saves organizations from themselves when the inevitable happen – These empowered individuals create internal redundancies that carry their department or in some instances, the entire organization, through the dark times when network availability or when system failures occur.

Why then, do most companies work to get away from redundancies in their business processes and procedures? As stated in the question, because they believe that redundancies are unnecessary and as an ‘excess’ could be rid of without any loss to the product or productivity – this is not always the case.

Work-In-Progress