Lottery Factor
Noun · Slang & Abbreviations
Definitions
A softer or more socially polite cousin of bus factor, referring to how vulnerable a team is if one key person becomes unavailable. In engineering slang, invoking the lottery factor is often a way to talk about risk without sounding morbid.
In plain English: The risk created when too much key knowledge depends on too few people.
Example: "The scheduler's lottery factor was effectively one, which is why leadership finally approved time for docs and ownership transfer before the original maintainer changed roles."