In the past few weeks, I've heard of two software development shops that have made the same mistake. They discount the knowledge and experience of their developers and assume that any other developers would do a job just as well as the experienced one. In one case, the project re-scheduled a release date to a time when a key developer would be on vacation. The belief was that the other developers would be able to pick up the task of managing the release just as well as the one on vacation. In the other case, a company decided to outsource their project to an inexperienced team. You can't just replace developers and expect that things will go smoothly. The experience of those developers matters and it may take years for a new team or developer to be able to replace an existing one. If you need to replace team members, plan for it and work at transferring the knowledge over time. Otherwise, you may be incurring a much higher risk to your project than you're aware.
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