An Absence Coverage Plan for a Team of Six

A team of six has no bench. When one person is out, that is seventeen percent of the team gone, and the work does not shrink to match. Most small teams handle this by having everyone absorb a bit more and hoping nothing lands badly, which works until two people are out in the same week.

The three questions a plan must answer

Not "who does the work". Small teams already know that and it is not where things break.

• Who decides? The thing that stops first is a decision nobody is allowed to make. Every area needs a named second with a written limit.
• Who answers? Questions that were going to the absent person have to go somewhere. If that somewhere is not named, it becomes the manager by default.
• What stops? The most important and least written line. Something will stop. Choosing it in advance is far cheaper than discovering it.

The coverage grid

One table for the whole team, filled in once and reviewed quarterly. It takes an hour and it is the only coverage artifact most small teams need.

Area	Owner	Decides in their absence	Stops
Client invoicing	Ana	Ben, up to 5,000 euros	Disputes wait
Production deploys	Kofi	Lena, fixes only	New releases wait
Key account, Meridian	Ben	Ana, no scope changes	Quarterly review moves

The fourth column is what makes this honest. A plan where nothing stops is a plan where everything silently lands on one person, and that person will be the most conscientious member of the team.

Unplanned absence is a different problem

Planned leave gets a handover. Illness does not, and illness is the case the grid is really for.

On the first morning of an unplanned absence, someone has to answer four questions: what was this person in the middle of, what is due this week, who outside the company is waiting on them, and what decision is pending. In most small teams nobody can answer any of the four without going through the absent person's messages.

The grid answers the ownership half. The state half needs something written down before the absence, which is exactly what nobody does. See the day someone does not log on.

Cross training, honestly

Cross training is the standard recommendation and it is expensive. In a team of six, a real second owner for every area means everyone is learning half of somebody else's job while doing their own.

So ration it. Cross train on the two or three things where a gap would genuinely hurt, and accept single ownership elsewhere with a written "stops" line. Trying to cross train everything produces a team that is shallowly competent at everything and slow at all of it.

Where you do cross train, do it by doing rather than shadowing. One day a month where the second owner runs the thing while the owner is available is worth more than any amount of documentation.

Who answers in place of whom

The grid handles decisions. It does not handle questions, and questions are the larger volume: where something stands, what was agreed, why a thing is set up that way. The second owner usually does not know, so they either guess or wait, and guessing to a client is the expensive one.

This is what StandIn is built for. Each day a person spends about ninety seconds on a brief: what moved, what is open, what is blocked, what is next, mostly drafted from the work itself. When they are out, planned or not, their StandIn answers from that brief, in their words, with a source under every answer. It never guesses, and when the answer is not in the record it says so and names who to ask. On the first morning of an unplanned absence, the four questions above have answers. See how teams use it, and the coverage plan for a twelve person team for the next size up.

Common Questions

How often should we review the grid?

Quarterly, and after any departure. It goes out of date quietly, and a grid naming someone who left four months ago is worse than none.

What about the manager's own absence?

It needs a row like everyone else, and it is the row most often missing. Name who decides in your absence and up to what limit, in writing, before you need it.

Should clients be told about cover arrangements?

For planned absence, yes, by name and in advance from the person going. For unplanned, tell them on day one with a named contact and a realistic response time. Silence is what damages the relationship, not the absence.

Is two people out at once worth planning for?

Write one line for it: what the team stops doing when two of six are out. You will not need a full plan, and having decided the answer once removes the worst hour of a bad week.