When Your Small IBM i Team Is Really A Team Of One

IBM i has long been associated with efficiency. Its reliability, integrated architecture, and low administrative overhead have enabled organizations to run critical business applications with relatively small teams. That same efficiency has created an emerging risk: in many smaller shops, operational resilience depends less on the platform itself and more on whether enough people know how to support it under pressure.

While some IBM i shops run with a lean team of two, three, or a small handful of staff, it is not unusual for one person to be responsible for the most critical aspects of the operation. The risk is more subtle than headcount alone. In many environments, operational knowledge is concentrated in one individual: the person who has run a live role swap, validates backup integrity, and knows the disaster recovery procedures inside out. On paper, there is a team. In practice, for the tasks that matter most under pressure, there is often a team of one.

This is what makes small teams deceptively exposed. A two-or-three-person team can carry a confidence that a lone administrator never would and yet still depend on a single person when an incident occurs. The technology itself remains highly resilient, but this concentration of knowledge introduces a different type of risk. For many organizations, the most significant single point of failure is no longer the infrastructure. It is the people who support it.

How Did We Get Here?

Several factors have contributed to this situation.

Many experienced IBM i professionals have spent years, sometimes decades, supporting the same environments. Their knowledge has grown alongside the systems they manage, encompassing application dependencies, operational procedures, backup strategies, HA/DR setups, and business processes. At the same time, organizations have faced increasing pressure to operate with leaner IT teams. Staff reductions, budget constraints, and competing technology priorities have often left fewer dedicated resources with deep IBM i skills.

The result is that many small teams now rely on one primary administrator, sometimes a developer by trade, who manages IBM i alongside numerous other responsibilities, while colleagues cover adjacent platforms or more general duties. This arrangement works well during normal operations. The challenge emerges when that individual is unavailable.

The Hidden Risk Of Tribal Knowledge

Ask many organizations to produce detailed documentation covering their IBM i environment and they will discover significant gaps. Critical information often exists only in the knowledge of one or two team members.

Examples include:

• Application dependencies

• Operational workarounds developed over many years

• Security administration practices

• Disaster recovery procedures

• Custom automation scripts

This type of tribal knowledge is valuable, but it also creates operational risk. If a key person retires, changes roles, or becomes unavailable during an incident, the remaining team members can find themselves struggling to execute procedures that were never formally documented. In some cases, documentation exists, but it has not been updated to reflect years of operational change.

The Growing Skills Challenge

The IBM i skills discussion is not new, but it continues to evolve.

Many organizations are successfully attracting and developing new talent. Modern IBM i environments increasingly incorporate technologies that appeal to broader IT teams, including open-source tools, cloud integration, automation, and modern development practices.

Transferring many years of operational experience, however, cannot happen overnight. New team members may understand the technology but still need time to develop the practical knowledge required to manage complex production environments confidently. Organizations therefore face a dual challenge. They must continue developing future skills while also reducing the team’s dependence on the one person who currently holds the critical knowledge.

Building Organizational Resilience

Addressing this challenge requires a broader view of resilience. Organizations should consider several practical steps:

• Monitoring, alerting, and operational processes should be reviewed so that issues can be identified and addressed quickly, before they impact the business.

• Critical procedures should be documented and reviewed regularly, in enough detail that another qualified administrator could follow them comfortably during in an emergency.

• Disaster recovery and role-swap procedures should be tested consistently. Testing validates both technical capability and organizational readiness.

• Cross-training should become a routine operational activity. Even small teams benefit from sharing knowledge and expanding responsibilities so that expertise is held by more than one person.

For smaller IBM i teams, the practical question is not whether outside help is needed for everything. It is where external support can reduce dependency at the points of greatest operational risk: documenting critical procedures, validating recovery readiness, testing role swaps, and providing cover when internal skills are stretched.

Many businesses supplement internal resources with external expertise when specialist knowledge is needed or when small teams want independent validation of their resilience plans. A partner can help by reviewing procedures, supporting role-swap planning, validating readiness, monitoring key indicators, or providing emergency assistance when internal resources are unavailable. Maxava offers services in these areas, including implementation support, 8×5 monitoring backed by Maxava Monitor Mi8, simulated and full role-swap planning and support, swap-ready audits, and 24×7 emergency response. These services can be engaged for a specific activity, such as a readiness audit or role-swap test, or as part of a regular arrangement that provides ongoing cover.

Preparing For The Future

IBM i continues to support some of the world’s most important business applications, and its reputation for reliability remains well deserved. Yet technology resilience is only one part of the equation.

Organizations must also consider operational resilience, ensuring that critical knowledge, processes, and expertise are not concentrated in a single individual, whatever the size of the team around them. The rise of the team of one reflects broader changes in the IT industry, including staffing pressures, evolving skill requirements, and increasing operational complexity.

Businesses that proactively address these challenges will be better positioned to manage future disruptions, support ongoing modernization efforts, and maintain confidence in the systems that underpin their operations.

In today’s environment, resilience is not simply about keeping servers running. It is about ensuring the organization can continue operating effectively, regardless of which individuals happen to be available when challenges arise.