The handover test

There is a version of this trade where the adviser never leaves. The meetings continue, the deck gets an update, the invoice arrives. We would rather be judged on whether the thing still works six months after we stopped coming.

Four questions

Can someone in the company describe the routine without reading a document? Does one named person own it? Is there a number that shows whether it is working, counted by someone who is not us? Has it survived a week when someone was off?

Four yeses is a handover. Three is a dependency.

Build the handover from week one

Handover is not a phase at the end, it is how the work is done from the start. The person who will own the routine writes it, not us. We sit next to them while they run it, and then we sit further away.

Write it short

A routine that takes nine pages to describe will not be followed. One page, in the words the team already uses, kept where the work happens rather than in a folder nobody opens.

Then go

The last week of a programme should be quiet. If it is not, something was being held up by the wrong pair of hands, and better to find that out in week twelve than after the invoice.