Don’t Wait for Crisis: 5 Steps to Eliminate Key Person Risk in TM1
Most TM1 teams rely too heavily on one expert. This post shows how to eliminate key-person risk with a 5-step documentation framework and build a resilient finance team.
The 3 AM Call Every TM1 Manager Dreads
At 3:14 AM, James, Financial Systems Manager at a Fortune 500 company, received a call every manager fears: a critical system failure.
“Our Asia-Pacific financial consolidation process has crashed. The TI process is displaying nested rule errors, and the executive dashboard is reporting negative revenues. The board meeting is scheduled in six hours.”
Immediately, James realized he needed Tom, the only person with detailed knowledge of the system. But Tom was unreachable, midway through a 16-hour flight to Singapore.
In that moment, James confronted a harsh reality: the financial reporting system of their $2.8 billion organization was entirely dependent on a single developer. There was no documentation, no backup knowledge, just Tom.
"We had an over-reliance risk," James realized. "And that terrified me."
If this scenario sounds familiar, you're not alone. Two-thirds of TM1 organizations face similar challenges, where critical systems depend heavily on a single individual. When that person is unavailable, the entire process stalls.
Learn how this Fortune 500 company eliminated this risky dependency and how your organization can achieve the same results.
What You’ll Learn
✔ The 6 hidden costs of knowledge bottlenecks
✔ A proven 5-step documentation framework to eliminate key-person risk
✔ Measurable improvements from teams who proactively mitigated these risks
Drawing from practical finance implementations, this step-by-step framework provides essential guidance for organizations managing complex TM1 systems dependent on a small number of experts.
By the end of this post, you'll have a clear approach to systematically reduce key-person risk and foster broader organizational knowledge sharing.
6 Hidden Costs of Knowledge Bottlenecks
In TM1 environments, critical knowledge often resides exclusively with a small number of experts, silently increasing organizational risk until a disruption occurs.
Based on insights from over 30 TM1 implementations, these are six common impacts:
- High key-person risk
Between 30% and 50% of critical TM1 models depend entirely on a single developer. An unexpected absence can halt essential planning or reporting processes. - Growing Enhancement Backlogs
Enhancement requests often remain incomplete for months because only one person fully understands the model’s dependencies.
- Delayed routine changes
Simple updates, which should take an hour, frequently extend to six or more due to unclear or undocumented model logic.
- Longer incident resolution times
Incident recovery times often more than double from around 12 hours to over 26 hours if the primary expert is unavailable. - Slow and Resource-Intensive Onboarding
New TM1 hires typically take 12–14 weeks to reach productivity, occupying up to 30% of senior developers’ time during onboarding.
- Recurring After-Hours Emergencies
Key developers field emergency calls multiple times per month, increasing stress and burnout.
These challenges are not unusual. They represent the standard reality for teams lacking comprehensive system visibility and effective knowledge-sharing processes.
A Proven 5-Step Documentation Framework to Eliminate Key-Person Risk
Leading TM1 teams consistently rely on variations of this proven documentation and knowledge-transfer framework. This structured approach blends practical techniques with organizational practices that ensure lasting impact.
Step 1: Conduct a Knowledge Vulnerability Assessment
Begin by identifying areas most vulnerable to key-person risk. Create a matrix that evaluates each critical process according to:
- Who fully understands the process end-to-end
- The business impact of process failure
- Availability of backup support or redundancy
Common high-risk areas often include:
- Complex TurboIntegrator (TI) processes
- Nested or complicated rules
- Custom feeder logic
- Infrequently used or poorly documented dimensions
Action step: Create a simple matrix of your most critical TM1 processes. Be honest about who really understands them.
Step 2: Prioritize Visual Mapping of Key Models
Text-heavy documentation is often time-consuming to produce and quickly becomes outdated. Visual documentation, however, accelerates understanding and improves communication.
Teams adopting visual documentation report:
- Faster understanding of systems (up to 60% improvement)
- More efficient onboarding
- Clearer cross-team collaboration between developers, finance, and IT
Common visual documentation includes:
- Cube relationship diagrams
- Rule dependency mappings
- TI process execution flows
- Exception logic callouts
Action step: Start by visually mapping your highest-risk TM1 model, clearly illustrating data flow, dependencies, and hidden logic in rules or TI processes.