What we solve ·How do I build something that later runs on its own?
Forge · Build
What happens when the two people who hold up your core system retire?
The person who knows retires in eighteen months and there is nobody to replace them.
The critical knowledge documented and the successors certified operating alone before the specialist leaves.
Mainframe succession programSend this page to whoever decides
What you receive
- The critical knowledge inventory with its year of risk.
- The procedures documented by whoever knows them and validated by whoever inherits them.
- The training program and the certification criterion by platform.
- Successors certified operating alone, verified before closing.
The proof that applies here
- Mainframe support capability built from zero to more than twenty people and turned into one of the region's reference groups.
- Generational succession executed without service interruption.
- 19 years in critical banking operations over z/OS, Unisys and Tandem platforms.
How we solve it
The method, not the promise.
- The critical knowledge gets inventoried by procedure, not by application, with the retirement year beside it.
- The successor pairs and the handover calendar get set, with the availability of whoever is leaving agreed in writing.
- What is not written today gets documented: written by whoever knows it and validated by whoever is arriving, which is the only order that works.
- Training and certification happen with a written criterion for what operating alone means.
- It gets accepted when the successor operates the critical procedures without the departing specialist for the agreed period.
Use this today, without hiring anyone
The critical knowledge inventory can be started alone and it is what pays off most. Three columns and one afternoon with your managers.
- Which critical procedure exists only in one head. Not the applications: the procedures. Closings, recoveries, production releases, responses to known failures.
- Whose head that is and what year they retire. Writing the year next to it changes the conversation with leadership immediately.
- What happens on the first Monday without that person. If the answer is "we call the one who retired", that is already your plan.
The order is what decides here. Start by documenting with the person who is leaving, not by hiring the person who is arriving. A successor hired with nothing written learns by accident and in disorder, and the departing specialist leaves anyway.
This sounds like you if
- Two people hold up your operation and both are close to retiring.
- You looked at the market and there is nobody to hire.
- The migration got postponed again and the core systems will stay alive for years.
Before you hire
The program depends on the departing specialist cooperating in the transfer, so the first thing is to agree it with them. If that is not possible, you are told before starting, along with the two alternatives that remain.
Few vendors train people on mainframe, and fewer have done it from zero. This program is designed by the person who built that capability from zero and knows how long it really takes to train someone until they operate alone.
If the person who runs the closing does not show up tomorrow, who does it, and have they ever done it?
If the problem is a different one
We opened the center a year ago and it still does not deliver what we were promised.
Nearshore capability build
The areas built their applications with AI and the person who made them left in March.
Self built software debt
We know that if it goes down, it goes down. No one has wanted to write what happens next.
Operational readiness diagnostic