Treat it as a risk that materialized and work the response. Make knowledge transfer their priority during the notice period, through recorded walkthroughs and paired sessions rather than a document written on the last day. Re-plan with realistic ramp up time for whoever takes over, and tell the sponsor the schedule impact immediately instead of hoping to absorb it quietly.
Why interviewers ask this
Key person risk is universal, and this checks whether you act structurally or emotionally. Interviewers want knowledge transfer prioritized over continued delivery during the notice period, realistic ramp up in the re-plan, and early disclosure of the impact. Bonus credit for mentioning that you should have had this risk logged with a mitigation already, since that connects the scenario back to your risk practice.
How to structure your answer
- Make knowledge transfer the priority for the notice period.
- Use recorded walkthroughs and pairing, not a last day handover doc.
- Re-plan with honest ramp up time for the replacement.
- Tell the sponsor the impact immediately.
- Reduce the single point of failure across the rest of the plan.
Example answer
I treat it as a risk that has landed and work the response rather than the panic. The single most valuable thing during a notice period is knowledge transfer, so that becomes their priority over delivery. Not a document written on the last day, which is always useless, but recorded walkthroughs of the tricky areas and paired sessions with whoever is picking it up, plus getting the undocumented things out of their head and onto the wiki. Then I re-plan honestly with real ramp up time, because assuming a replacement is productive in week one is how you slip twice. And I tell the sponsor the impact straight away rather than trying to absorb it quietly. On one project we lost the person who owned the integration layer, and being upfront about a three week impact got us two weeks of a contractor's time approved fast, which roughly halved it.
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See how it worksFollow-up questions to expect
- What do you do if they are leaving on bad terms and will not cooperate?
- How do you spot key person risk before it becomes a resignation?
- How do you decide between backfilling and redistributing the work?
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