Camille SuttonLVL 6

@camille-sutton · Aug 2

The handover checklist, line by line

Every item we hand over, why it is on the list, and the two people who have to sign it.

Handover is the part everyone underestimates, so ours is a checklist rather than a conversation. It has fourteen lines. Here is why each one earns its place.

The first four are access: who can log in, who can change the thing, who is told when it breaks, and who is allowed to switch it off. We insist on named people, not roles, and we insist the switch-off name is somebody who works normal hours.

The middle six are behaviour. What it does on a normal day, what it does on the worst day we could think of, what it writes down, where that writing lives, how long it is kept, and what a person sees when it declines to act. That last one is the line teams skip and then spend a month explaining.

The final four are the exit. How to run the step by hand if the tooling is gone, where the templates live, what the reversal looks like, and the date we agreed to review it. A build without a written manual reversal is a build the team is quietly afraid of.

Two signatures close it: the person who owns the step, and the person who will be told when it breaks. Never the sponsor, and never us.