Focal points

This is a very simple principle which take`s zero effort to implement. Surprisingly, a lot of teams do not implement it.

The problem:
When outsiders (non group guys) want to talk with insiders about a bug/feature/just-an-explanation , they rarely know who to refer to in the group.
In a lot of teams , the outsider need to go through all the group members , one-by-one , to find out who can help him with the relevant subject. When this one-by-one walk is done by email, the outsider will probably give up after three or four fwd`ed mails.
Add to that that sometimes the first-line-manager or 2nd-line-manager are also outsiders , and you can see what a horrific waste of time and bad intra-group communication is done here.
On some cases (aka "Agile") this can also happen inside the group , as a feature/bug does not have a clear go-to guy and instead the "whole group" is responsible to everything.



Solution:
It does not matter if you used the "circle-of-knowledge" principle / Agile / Scrum or any other methodologies, you must assign one "focal point" person for each feature/area.

The focal point will know which feature/bugs are being developed and will be able to say who developed it ,which bugs may be related and pinpoint the exact person which will be able to give you the final answer.
They must know the field well , but do not need to be the one which actually write the code or knows the exact small details of everything.

In a flat-hierarchy team , there can be a lot of focal-points , each one is responsible for his own area-of-expertize.
In a traditional hierarchy team , the group/team leaders tend to be the focal points for all the areas their team are doing.

It takes a MAX of 3 hops to get to the person which knows the answer:
first hop - Danny points you to the focal point of this subject, Joe.
second hop - Joe either knows the answer right away and we are done here, or knows exactly who solved the bug a month ago (Jenny) and send her a email, cc-ing himself regarding the problem.
third hop - Jenny answers the problem and will never "pass-it-on".


a final note: DO NOT MISTAKE FOCAL-POINT TO TEAM LEADER.
Focal-point can be a non-senior programmer too, if he is the main expert in his field (or the field is so un-intresting that no one wants to get near it)