In January, I let my boss know that after more than six years, I would be leaving the company (after a long transition period). Having spent six years in my role, there was quite a bit of knowledge that only existed in my head. He asked that I put together a list of what I did along with a job description for my replacement.

The job description felt like a monumental task, so I started with just a list of what I did day in and day out. Luckily, I keep a bulleted list of what I do each day. I archive these off on a weekly basis. After retrieving these task logs for the last twelve months, I went through the tasks and categorized them into recurring items.

Once I had this comprehensive list of tasks I performed over the last twelve months, I then classified them as:

  • Should be done by the person in my role
  • Should be delegated to someone on my team
  • Should be done by someone on a different team
  • Should not be done

With the list of items that should be done by my replacement (and a couple of web searches), it was easy to generate the job description. However, the real value of this exercise was identifying those items I should be doing and those I should delegate. If only I had been doing this before and on a more regular basis.