Back Each Other Up
One job each, one other’s job badly; pull a part and see what the rest cannot carry.
Formerly Cross-Cover
A quartet with one chair empty voices the missing line by ear.
Seen in Matt Leacock, Pandemic, Z-Man Games, 2008
Try it on your work
Divide the thing you're working on into three parts with three different jobs. Give each part the ability to do one other part's job, badly. Remove one part. Stop when the remaining two have carried its job once. What they could not carry is the critical function you had not named.
Write three paragraphs that each do a different job: state, justify, illustrate. Make each able to stand in for one other if cut. Cut one at random. Stop when the remaining two still read as a whole.
In a group of three, give each person one main task and exactly one other person's task they could cover. Let anyone leave at any time. Stop when the first departure is absorbed without a meeting.
How it has been used
Space crews have distinct primary roles, but critical functions cannot depend on a single person remaining available. NASA has used cross-training so crew members can back up one another during emergencies or workload peaks. The aim is not a team of interchangeable generalists; it is a set of specialists with deliberate overlap at the points where failure would otherwise stop the mission.
Where it leads
Grouped under Spread it across more people or parts